Need help!! Urgent!!!

[adambush4242]

I'm working with two excel workbooks, both about 10,000 kb in size. When I
use one everything works fine but as soon as I open the other I get an Out of
Memory message, along with some weird printer setup dialogs and sometimes a
not enough available resources message. I am using Excel 2003 on Windows XP.
As soon as the errors appear Excel will no longer work and is forced to shut
down. I have a 75 gb hard drive with 7,294,988 kb of physical memory
available. What can I do to get around this? I need to copy from one to the
other so they need to be open at the same time on the same computer? Any
ideas? Please help?

Thanks

Adam Bush

 

[Otto Moehrbach]

You are saying that you have 2 files, each about 10 megs big. You also say
you have over 7 gigs of memory. Do you really have over 7 gigs of memory?
The error you are getting indicates that you don't have enough available
memory to handle those 2 files. But that indicates that you don't have over
7 gigs of memory. Look into making your files smaller. Also look into
removing the number and size of memory-resident programs that you have
running. Also look into doing this on someone else's computer. HTH Otto
"(e-mail address removed)"

 

[adambush4242]

Otto,

I've tried this on several computers and the same thing keeps happening.
Any other ideas?

Thanks

Adam Bush

 

[Otto Moehrbach]

Adam
The options available to you are simple to state. One, increase the
amount of memory in your computer. Two, decrease the size of your files.
Three, increase the amount of available memory in your computer by
eliminating the number of memory-resident programs running on your computer.
Let's look at each:
More Memory:
You said you have 7,294,988 kb of memory. Where did you get this number
from? It sounds extremely large. Did you mean 7,294,988 bytes? That is
extremely small. If you indeed have only just over 7 megs of memory you
would not have been able to boot with XP much less open even one of those
files. I run XP with about 0.75 gigs of memory and have no memory problems.
How much memory do the other computers have?

More available memory:
Click on Start - Run, type "msconfig" without the quotes and click OK.
Click on the "Startup" tab. All of the programs that are checked are
memory-resident programs and are loaded into memory when the computer boots.
Most of them are not necessary. I would uncheck all of them and click OK.
You will get a message box telling you that you have to reboot. Do so.
Then you will get a message box telling you that you have changed those
things. Select that you don't want to see that message box anymore and the
computer will boot. Play around with several programs that you normally use
and see if things are running right. You may need to check a few of them
and reboot. You shouldn't do any of this if you are apprehensive about
messing with your computer. It's your call.

Decrease the size of your files:
Excel has a rather nasty way of doing things that results, many times, in
your file being MUCH larger that it really needs to be. To demonstrate this
on a very small scale, open Excel with a new blank file. Make an entry in
A1. Select some other cell. Do Ctrl-End. Excel will jump to A1. This
tells you that Excel is taking A1 to be the last used cell on the sheet.
That makes for a nice small file. Now make an entry in G20. Select some
other cell. Again do Ctrl-End. Excel jumps to G20 as the last used cell.
This makes for a larger file than before. Now delete the entry in G20. Now
you and I know that A1 is the last used cell. Do Ctrl-End to see what Excel
thinks is the last used cell. It's G20. Now this demonstration is on a
very small scale so you have to think about a couple hundred columns and
tens of thousands of rows to appreciate how a nominal size file gets to be a
huge file.
Try this on a number of sheets in your 2 files and see how much difference
you find between what you know to be the last used cell and what Excel takes
to be the last used cell.
Come back with what you find. Otto

"(e-mail address removed)"

 

[adambush4242]

Otto,

When i hit control-alt-delete and checked the available memory it said
7,294,988 k. I'm kind of wary of changing the memory-resident programs as we
run several different softwares which need to be accurate. I tried hitting
control end in my workbook and it went about five rows past my last cell
entry, so I assume that's fine. THanks for your help, and any other ideas
would be graeat.

Thanks

Adam Bush

 

[Otto Moehrbach]

Adam
You have just over 7 megs of memory available. There is virtually
nothing that you can accomplish with that little bit of memory. You must
get more memory. Otto
"(e-mail address removed)"

 

[adambush4242]

Otto,

Just to make sure we're on the same page, I pressed control-alt-delete, went
to Task manager, then performance. The memory number I am talking abou is
the physical memory. I'm confused because you said that I have very little
memory and that I should barely be able to run XP. On my system, I can
sometimes run maybe eight different programs at the same time with no
problem, so I don't know if that is the issue. Also, I tried opening up two
of my spreadhseets in two separate versions of Excel at the same time and
that seemed to work fine. Does this clarify the situation any more?

Thanks

Adam Bush

 

[Otto Moehrbach]

Adam
I was just going with the number you gave me, 7 megs of memory. It
appears you have more than that, so I'm at a loss as to what to tell you.
Otto
"(e-mail address removed)"