Typing delay in Excel 2008

[deanmig]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

Nearly the entire Finance dept at Apple has now de-installed Excel 2008 and had to re-install 2004, due to the severe typing delays in a single cell. We got thru all the crashes and early issues, but can not get past the typing delays, which is completely wasting our time. I've timed between a 5 and 10 second delay from the time you type in a cell to the time the letters appear in a cell. Excel 2008 is NOT supported at Apple in Finance now which is just unbelievable. I have new MBP with nothing else running, clean install 3 times. Why do I see this problem all over the internet in blogs, but do not see anything about this on the MS site? Surely this is the #1 problem with Excel since its so widespread throughout our company.

 

[deanmig]

I'm trying to troubleshoot this today; I'm not connected to any network, and my iDisk for mobileme is not setup/connected. (normally this machine is connected to network). And the typing delay seems to not be an issue. So this leads me to believe that Excel is trying to find or do something when connected over our LAN. Is there a setting that can be turned off in the Preferences?

 

[Pat McMillan]

Hi,

It's true that we've heard from some customers about this problem, but we
unfortunately haven't been able to get a consistent repro of the problem.
One customer on this forum suggested that he was able to solve the problem
by cleaning up the DNS server lookup database on his company's DNS server.
Please see the last post in this thread:

http://www.officeformac.com/ProductForums/Excel/1735

Incidentally -- we have a close relationship with the OS Development team at
Apple and would be happy to work with them to get to the bottom of this
problem. Feel free to contact me directly if you would like to pursue that
option.

Thanks,

Pat McMillan
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Grant]

I have the exact same situation. Clean (brand new in fact) machines that have Office 2008 Standard installed and when creating a new brand new file from Excel (all updates run up to 12.1.2) we are experiencing the same problem. I also have seen this all over the internet. I have experimented with local vs. network files, new files, old files, nothing seems to matter. It is not on all of the machines, but new users, new OS installs, complete reinstalls of Office 2008 have not solved this problem. These are not large files and the problem seems system wide.

 

[Pat McMillan]

Are you saying that this happens when your machine is disconnected from your
home or business network? If so, I would love to get more information from
you (some sample system profiles and possibly some Excel/Office preference
files).

If it only happens when your machines are connected to your local area
network, can you please check to see if this might be the problem (from a
separate post):

One customer on this forum suggested that he was able to solve the problem
by cleaning up the DNS server lookup database on his company's DNS server.
Please see the last post in this thread:

http://www.officeformac.com/ProductForums/Excel/1735

Thanks,

Pat
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Aaron]

I also am having the same problems with Excel. It is painfully slow when typing. My machine is connected to my home network, however I am not pulling files off of a network and just looking at files on my hard drive. regardless of file size and complexity, excel is just slow.

I have a MBA and have noticed this problem since the beginning of the install. Using pivot tables, typing, and vlookup is painfully slow. At one point I eventually switched back to my windows xp laptop just to complete some work.

 

[HZC]

I followed the link but I don't think this is the case for most people. I'm
not getting the Microsoft Excel [271] error, but I am getting a Microsoft
Excel [4207] error which is "CGBitmapContextData: invalid context"

I find it hard to believe that you guys cannot get a consistent reproduction
of this problem as it seems to be so rampant.

One thing for sure though, if you don't fix this soon, you'll lose some
customers because it makes Excel nearly impossible to use... though these
customers will just go back to Excel on Windows

 

[HZC]

Please see this article: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=1453.

I think it MIGHT be related. After reading this, I quit Safari and Excel,
re-opened Excel and so far I am not experiencing the speed issue.

Now the question is: If the issue is related to Safari, how exactly does
Excel interact with Safari to cause these delays.

 

[Pat McMillan]

Thanks. Unfortunately, just because a lot of people are hitting an issue
doesn't mean it's easy for us to reproduce. For every customer hitting this
issue, I know there are many customers who have never encountered it.

Which is where this forum and customers like you come in. The people on this
group have been *super* helpful in providing us information that's helped us
narrow down problems -- many of which we've fixed in updates since Office
2008 came out.

So I really appreciate your pointer to the blog post about the Safari
Plug-in topic. We'll definitely investigate that. Another thing that would
be really valuable would be if people who are encountering this could send
me the following:

1. A system profile (in the default system profile format)
2. Confirmation if it happens when disconnected from any network
3. Confirmation if it happens when Safari is not running

Thanks,

Pat
(e-mail address removed)

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Patrick -

I mean no disrespect to the individual who posted that link, but just out of
curiosity I tried with Safari running & saw no degradation in Excel's
performance. I then went to the article to find that the poster apparently
missed the conclusion stated in the final sentence of the last paragraph:

================================
I hoping to blame kernel_task for my laggy Excel 2008 performance problems
but it has more to do with Safari plug-in bloat. It is one of the more
resource intensive processes inside of Mac OS X, runs at process number
(PID) 0 and eats virtual memory like it¹s going out of style but it doesn¹t
appear to be what¹s hobbling Excel.
================================

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Pat McMillan]

Thanks Bob. Yes, I noticed that when reading the link too.

Given the similarity of this issue with the one discussed in the "Excel
2008: Slow typing when using Parallels" thread today, I'll post a link to
that thread here: http://www.officeformac.com/ProductForums/Excel/2681

For anyone experiencing typing delays in Excel 2008, please consider the
suggested workarounds (to disable the most recent file list) suggested
there. And please let us know if it resolves your issues.

Thanks,

Pat

 

[CyberTaz]

Didn't mean to imply that your comprehension skills were lacking Just
thought I'd give you an advance heads up if you hadn't yet had an
opportunity to get to the article.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[PCinaMacWorld]

Hi - I'm new to Mactopia, so I am not technically inclined at all, but I had the same problem. My IT consultant had me create a new user and then work from that profile. It solved my Excel problem immediately. If someone already said this above, sorry for repeating. I just don't have time now to read all and wanted to get our solution posted if it helps anybody.

 

[deanmig]

The solution to this problem seems to be one or more of the following (I was successful with items 1 and 2, but not 3 - the problem went away immediately)

1) Choose "Clear Recent" from the File/Open Recent menu in Excel when you encounter the problem

2) Turn off the recent files list entirely by going to Excel/Preferences... General and disabling the checkbox that says "Show this number of recent documents:".

3) Close all Office apps, then trash ~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.plist

 

[paulcwr]

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! the problem was getting to bad that i was resorting to using parallels and office. Actually clearing the recently opened files list and disabling that feature solved the problem. I was actually having the problem both in Excel and Powerpoint and the same solution worked in both applications. I noticed it took a strange length of time to clear the recently opened file list in either applications (something like a minute) which indicates this list must be calling on some strange routine. Please Microsoft do something about this. Also the design of the recently opened list menu item is TERRIBLE - why did not leave it at the bottom of the file menu as in the old applications. It cannot be good user interface practices to put such a useful implement behind another menu item. what were you thinking?

 

[Pat McMillan]

Thanks. Yes, we are aware that this problem affects PowerPoint too and are
working on a fix. Regarding the location of the Open Recent command, we did
this specifically to adhere to Apple's design guidelines. This is how Apple
says recent file functionality should be implemented. Look at TextEdit or
Preview -- they implement this in exactly the same way. Have you complained
to Apple about your dissatisfaction with those apps and their guidelines
generally?

Thanks,

Pat

 

[Paul Derby]

One of our finance people was going crazy with the delay in entering data
into Excel cells. This post had the solution: "Clear Recent" from the
File/Open Recent menu.

Thanks for your post with a solution.

 

[Matt Bateman]

My issue may not be exactly the same, but similar. We just upgraded from 2004 to 2008 and files that worked fine in 2004 (and XP 2003 and 2007) are very slow in 2008. It appears to be when typing in any cell that is then used in a formula somewhere else. Just entering the data and moving to the next cell takes several seconds now on an otherwise fast Mac Pro.

We are updated to 12.1.3 and I have tried the "Clear Recent" change above. Neither had any impact on the slowness. I also tried disconnecting from the network with no change.

 

[Matt Bateman]

More info on our issue... Turning of auto calculation "corrects" the problem. This is obviously not a real solution, but points to the problem being with the calculation of formulas.

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

More info on our issue... Turning of auto calculation "corrects" the problem.
This is obviously not a real solution, but points to the problem being with
the calculation of formulas.

Actually, it often IS a real solution. Many workbooks take a long time to
calculate. I've seen some that take minutes. Entering data in Manual
calculation mode, and then calculating the sheet (or switching back to
Automatic) when all the data is complete is why manual calculation exists.