[schalliol]

Hey folks, I need some help quickly if possible. I'm working on some fairly big Excel books, but I have a GB of RAM and I'm running little else. I checked Activity Manager, I have tons of free RAM. What can I do? It seems like Excel needs to use what free RAM is available. I can't separate the sheets anymore to make it smaller and I can't calculate cells for a serious deadline by morning. Can anyone help? Thanks!

[krove]

I abhor Excel, but am force to use it. Ugh. It also quits on me, and offers paltry formatting options with regards to figures (i.e. cannot select multiple elements to change font, font size, etc -- royal pain in the ass).

Sorry, I have no other insight other than to try OpenOffice or some other open source office application suite.

[schalliol]

Other than this I like Excel a lot acutally. Not sure what you mean about the formatting, you can format over many selections and even format within sections of a cell if you have a string of text or something you want to partially color. Unfortunately nothing comes close to Excel for the powerhouse functions.

That aside, anyone else?

[Thinine]

Could you clarify what the problem is? Excel's not fast enough, or what?

[cpac]

If you're asking because Excel is giving you an error saying it doesn't have enough memory or something, you should know that this a bug in Office that has nothing to do with RAM, but manifests itself in a lot of different error messages.

I'm not sure there's a total fix yet, though disabling auto-save and/or quitting/restarting Excel every so often seems to fix the problem.

You should do a search of these forums for similar problems with Word, and see if there was ever a total fix (IIRC, it could be fixed by deleting a corrupt file somewhere?)

[EDIT]

Seems like there's no fix yet, but if this is indeed the problem you're having, this link may explain it better:

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/WordMac/apple_os_10.htm

[/EDIT]

[schalliol]

The problem is that the spreadsheet won't calculate and often gives an error of low memory, when there is tons available. So it won't calculate the sheets.

[Synotic]

Originally posted by schalliol:
The problem is that the spreadsheet won't calculate and often gives an error of low memory, when there is tons available. So it won't calculate the sheets.

This is probably a bad solution but do you possible have Classic with Office 2001? Could you allocate like 750MB of ram to Excel 2001 and work from within there?

[yukon]

www.openoffice.org

sorry, someone had to say it. best of luck with the demon software

[schalliol]

Originally posted by yukon:
www.openoffice.org

sorry, someone had to say it. best of luck with the demon software

If you would have looked, you'd see someone else already did.

If the spreadsheet software in OpenOffice was even comparable, it would make sense to try. For a word processor, it certainly wouldn't make much difference to most users. Provide some useful information and read the post next time.

[wataru]

Is your Office updated all the way? I believe 10.1.5 is the newest version.

[dtriska]

I get "Not Enough Memory" errors in Excel from time to time. They happen when I had several workbooks open with database functions between them all. The workbooks have 20 000 rows, that kind of stuff. Unfortunately, the errors only go away as I close workbooks.

[yukon]

Originally posted by schalliol:
If you would have looked, you'd see someone else already did.

www.openoffice.org

No one gave the link

Maybe check out Open Office at openoffice.org (http://www.openoffice.org). Anyway, if you have (had now) a really important deadline, perhaps a slighly less able spreadsheet would have sufficed because it could get it done. Not surprising that an MS application has a bug, in which the application runs out of RAM, and it hasn't been fixed years later though it is still current (all it needs now is a virus to exploit it), if you don't mind me showing my already obvious opinion.

[Tsilou B.]

Originaly posted by schalliol:
If the spreadsheet software in OpenOffice was even comparable, it would make sense to try.

What do you mean?
Not comparable = uses other function names and is not compatible enough? That's right.
Not comparable = less capable? That's absolutely wrong.
OpenOffice Calc has a lot more functions than Microsoft Excel and is more powerful than Excel (whereas Word is more powerful than OpenOffice Writer).
However, Calc uses different names for many functions and you would probably have problems if you tried to import your spreadsheet.

[nsxpower]

Originally posted by Tsilou B.:
What do you mean?
Not comparable = uses other function names and is not compatible enough? That's right.
Not comparable = less capable? That's absolutely wrong.
OpenOffice Calc has a lot more functions than Microsoft Excel and is more powerful than Excel (whereas Word is more powerful than OpenOffice Writer).
However, Calc uses different names for many functions and you would probably have problems if you tried to import your spreadsheet.

I am sick and tired of people trolling OpenOffice in every ****ing thread. It would be fine if they actually used it for anything more then basic needs ... then half of them would not be writing stupid **** like that.

First of all, the person who started this thread HAS to use Excel:
- the spreadsheet he is working on is in Excel format and is huge.
- he is doing it for work and will have to deliver the final product as an Excel spreadsheet
These two factors already make OO pretty useless, because from my experiences with OO it does not traslate Excel back and forth well and sometime breaks things. The situation get worse if:
- he is using VBA or macros in the spreadsheet ... redoing everything in OO Basic would probably take too much time.
- if there are charts in his spreadsheet then he is better of using Excel, because OO charts just suck.
Also, keep in mind that OO has oddities relating to layout and most importantly formula entry conventions that will drive a long time Excel user ****ing mad!
OO has plenty of problems that people seem to forget in the same way that Mac users tout Macs no matter what ... .

Rant over.

My advice to the original poster would be to borrow a PC laptop or do overtime at the office to get the work done.

[Tsilou B.]

Originally posted by nsxpower:
I am sick and tired of people trolling OpenOffice in every ****ing thread. It would be fine if they actually used it for anything more then basic needs ... then half of them would not be writing stupid **** like that.

First of all, the person who started this thread HAS to use Excel:
- the spreadsheet he is working on is in Excel format and is huge.
- he is doing it for work and will have to deliver the final product as an Excel spreadsheet
These two factors already make OO pretty useless, because from my experiences with OO it does not traslate Excel back and forth well and sometime breaks things. The situation get worse if:
- he is using VBA or macros in the spreadsheet ... redoing everything in OO Basic would probably take too much time.
- if there are charts in his spreadsheet then he is better of using Excel, because OO charts just suck.
Also, keep in mind that OO has oddities relating to layout and most importantly formula entry conventions that will drive a long time Excel user ****ing mad!
OO has plenty of problems that people seem to forget in the same way that Mac users tout Macs no matter what ...

No, I did not write stupid ****! No, I do not forget the problems OOo has.
I did not suggest that the person who started the thread should try to switch to OpenOffice to get his work done. Next time please read my post before writing stupid ***** like that.

What I DID say was that OOo Calc is not generally worse than Excel. As someone who holds a Ph.D. in physics, I can certainly say that because DO use OOo and Office for more than "basic needs".

[Keiretsu]

Originally posted by Tsilou B.:
No, I did not write stupid ****! No, I do not forget the problems OOo has.
I did not suggest that the person who started the thread should try to switch to OpenOffice to get his work done. Next time please read my post before writing stupid ***** like that.

What I DID say was that OOo Calc is not generally worse than Excel. As someone who holds a Ph.D. in physics, I can certainly say that because DO use OOo and Office for more than "basic needs".

a) OO does not cut it
b) people that judge tools based on religious belief rather than features just don't cut it
c) people having a restricted vocabulary and have to use the f-word in too many places just do not cut it

[yukon]

OO has problems. Obviously, Office has problems (note the thread subject). Many of OO's problems, specifically importing/exporting xls files, stem from the fact that Office makes it it's business to make problems for OO. Office is very expensive, OO is more than free (as in "freer than just free"). Office is made by a monopoly which abuses it's power, OO is only supported by a company that wants to be a monopoly but can't become one through OO. Most people don't know they have an option to use any free kind of Office software, Office comes preinstalled on many machines and is made "required software" by businesses which don't know about OO. Since Appleworks isn't much of an option ATM (maybe partly the fault of Office?), there's only two options and few people know about the second.

These are Mac forums, with many people who made it their business to advocate options other than Microsoft software, a "Quick, I need Excel to work by morning!" post will get people to post other options. And finally, just because I want to see nsxpower's face turn purple, http://www.openoffice.org.

[wataru]

Even better than OO.o: NeoOffice/J