How Big Can Excel File Get Before They Are Too Big?

[Eric.Neutuch]

How big can Excel files get before they are too big? Is there a
standard rule on this?

I have a file that contains 4,800 rows, each representing a high
school student, and 50+ columns. I want to grow it to 6,000 rows over
the next year but worry about corruption, slowness, crashes,
etc.

Thank you for your help!

 

[Bob Flanagan]

Eric, they can get tremendously larger. I would not worry.

Bob Flanagan
Macro Systems
http://www.add-ins.com
Productivity add-ins and downloadable books on VB macros for Excel

 

[Franksta]

Hi Eric,


Some documentation on the size limitations can be found at
http://visio.mvps.org/Excel_2007.htm and
http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2005/09/26/474258.aspx

This basically says that there is sufficient room for the growth that you
mention, however, I would look at the type of data that you are storing in
that file and the file size itself. Anything over 12 MB can have hiccups
along the way, just keep a backup to be sure (it's always best practise to
keep a relatively up to date back or two).

If you have heavy linking and pivot tables, this can compound issues in the
past, haven't seen any massive improvements on how it reads pivot data and
refreshing data. If you have heaps of external links to data sources, then
that can also affect the spreadsheet. The simple answer is "yes" you can
grow further, but there are further considerations to take into account.


Hope this helps,
Frank.

 

[ChrisM]

In message (e-mail address removed),

How big can Excel files get before they are too big? Is there a
standard rule on this?

I have a file that contains 4,800 rows, each representing a high
school student, and 50+ columns. I want to grow it to 6,000 rows over
the next year but worry about corruption, slowness, crashes,
etc.

Thank you for your help!

As others have said, shouldn't be anything close to 'too big'
The only thing I would say, is that this sounds a lot like a database, if
I'm right, have you thought about using Access or similar instead of Excel?

 

[Bill Ridgeway]

In message (e-mail address removed),


As others have said, shouldn't be anything close to 'too big'
The only thing I would say, is that this sounds a lot like a database, if
I'm right, have you thought about using Access or similar instead of
Excel?

Chris. You wrote <<The only thing I would say, is that this sounds a lot
like a database, if I'm right, have you thought about using Access or
similar instead of Excel?>>

I agree with the sentiment. However it doesn't fully answer the OP. If the
computer doesn't have the oomph to handle big files it is rather academic
whether the file is Excel or Access. (Yes I know that's a big
generalisation and there are difference in the way that Excel and Access
handles data). In other words it pays to thouroughly think the project
through (sizing is just one aspect) before it gets going, find you've backed
the wrong (software) horse on the wrong hardware (track).

Bill Ridgeway
Computer Solutions