Excel 2007 painfully slow.

[smithkl42]

As I've read about the Excel 2007 performance improvements that MS
touts in Excel 2007
(http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa730921.aspx, for instance),
I've had to refrain from laughing out loud. For all I know, MS
actually has managed to improve the calculation engine in 2007 -- but I
wouldn't know, because for all the huge worksheets that I've built and
worked with over the years, I've never had recalculation be the
bottleneck. What I do know is that for the typical user in our
organization, Excel 2007 is at least an order of magnitude slower than
Excel 2003.

To take just one example: we've built a reasonably complex spreadsheet
using a combination of VBA and external data access that pulls data
from a couple of tables on a SQL server, and displays ~50 graphs spread
out over 8 tabs. On a variety of machines running Excel 2003, it takes
approximately one second to re-select the data from the SQL table and
refresh those 50 graphs; and of course, navigating between tabs, and
scrolling up and down within tabs is as speedy as we're all used to.
The same spreadsheet, moved to Excel 2007, takes between 5-15 seconds
to refresh (depending on the machine), and you can actually watch the
graphs repainting themselves on the screen. And scrolling up and down
within a tab, as new graphs come on the screen and leave, is so slow
and clunky as to make it almost unusable. (Oh, and it also leaves
fragments of graphs sitting on your screen as the previous graphs
leave.)

MS apparently made the switch to a common charting engine across Office
2007, and screwed their users in the process. Entirely apart from the
ribbon interface (which I hate -- try doing a paste special in Outlook
from the keyboard), it's performance that is going to keep our company
from migrating to Office 2007.

Just wanted to post my annoyance and frustration somewhere. I'm a big
MS fan -- and I desperately hope that MS fixes the performance issues
in a service pack, and soon.

Ken

 

[orbii]

any other reference to topic on this slowness is greatly appriciated...
gonna print some for next week's monday meeting.

aloha, orbii

 

[Guest]

I too have developed some EXTENSIVE worksheets for the production of our
financial statements (& various other purposes). I make extensive use of
conditional formatting to highlight variations in data & 'aberrant' financial
results. This was developed -- & runs just FINE -- in Excel 2003.

The formatting of 'raw' financial data (output from our accounting system
reports) in these worksheets is controlled by code -- which iterates
row-by-row through the worksheet to set up all the formulas, references,
conditional formatting, etc. All starts off FINE -- but, as the worksheet
formatting continues, Excel 2007 slows to a CRAWL after (only) 25-50 rows.
[The number of rows on these financial reports typically is 300-400 rows.]

I have done (roughly) timed comparisons between Excel 2003 & 2007 on the
SAME worksheets / data. I would say that 2007 appears to be probably 1/5th to
1/10th the speed of 2003. In fact 2007 (on worksheets with HEAVY use of
conditional formats) is SO SLOWWWwww that it is nearly UNUSABLE.

I have done various experiments / comparisons -- & to the best that I have
been able to determine, it is the CONDITIONAL FORMATS that create the
problem. The bulk of the cells with data on my worksheets have conditional
formats (typically 3 levels deep) -- which means that a typical worksheet may
have (upwards of) 50-60K conditional formats per worksheet (300-400 rows by
~50 principal formatted columns by ~3 conditional formats per data cell).

Large numbers of conditional formats creates NO problem (or slowdown) in
2003 -- but is a DISASTER in 2007.

So far, the other aspects of 2007 have been (pretty much) GREAT -- but the
(apparent) conditional format issue is a GIGANTIC PROBLEM.

Incidentally, workbook sizes for this app run 250-500MB in Excel 2003. In
Excel 2007, the file size (on disk) is reduced to about 20% of 2004 files.
However, when loaded in memory, it seems to take up (probably) 2-3x the space
-- & takes a LONG time to load. The workbooks contain 100-150+ worksheets.

I also have used (in 2007) pivottables -- some in excess of 50K (to over
100K) rows & MANY columns. These operate just fine (adjusting for their
relative size). In fact, for these (& most other things) Excel 2007 is MUCH
superior to 2003.

So, here's hoping that MS takes (RAPID) NOTE of -- & FIXES -- this (VERY
IRRITATING & PROBLEMMATIC) glitch in Excel 2007...

 

[phases78]

I have several users requesting a rollback to 2000/2003 because of
this issue. And I don't blame them. Watching them try to work with
these workbooks full of charts and seeing how terribly painfully slow
it is.. I see why they are so upset. These files open right up and the
charts render fine on 6 year old computers running 2000. I hope a fix
is released ASAP.

 

[rbsmith2000]

Did you ever find a fix or circumvention for this?