How large can a file get before it is too big for Excel to handle?

[cphalen]

Is there a point when an Excel file can get too large for Excel to handle.
We have users that are opening large excel files and they are getting the
following error:

Excel cannot complete this task with available resources. Choose less data
or close other applications.

The file that we are having the most issues with is 409,774 KB.

Thanks in advance for any response you can provide.

 

[FSt1]

hi
technically file size is limited to available resources meaning disk size,
memory, other and you seem to have hit that some way or another. i would
check task manager to see how much memory excel is using as well as the file
plus how applications you have open and how much junk you have running in
the background. may be a time for upgrade.

regards
FSt1

 

[cphalen]

Thanks for the response. I just tried to open the spreadshet on my PC and
the Downloading spreadsheet.xls process starts and Excel is taking up 0-2%
of the CPU and on average 16,660K of memory or less. When the downloading
process is complete and Excel starts to open the file the CPU usage stays
about the same but the memory usage shoots to approximaltey 2G and the error
I listed below appears. The only way to close excel at this point is to end
task. At the time I tried to open this file I was running 3 instances of
Internet Explorer and 1 instanace of Outook.

 

[Gord Dibben]

Depends upon available resoruces provided by your OS.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

 

[FSt1]

hi,
what are you downloading??

regards
FSt1

Thanks for the response. I just tried to open the spreadshet on my PC and
the Downloading spreadsheet.xls process starts and Excel is taking up 0-2%
of the CPU and on average 16,660K of memory or less. When the downloading
process is complete and Excel starts to open the file the CPU usage stays
about the same but the memory usage shoots to approximaltey 2G and the error
I listed below appears. The only way to close excel at this point is to end
task. At the time I tried to open this file I was running 3 instances of
Internet Explorer and 1 instanace of Outook.

 

[cphalen]

When I attempt to open the file there is a green status bar at the bottom
right hand corner of Excel that states "Downloading spreadsheet.xls"

 

[FSt1]

hi
does that mean you don't know what is downloading. this could be the source
of your problem? do you have any on open macros running that is suppose to
download data from somewhere? if so what and where?

Regards
FSt1