A Head Scratcher
So here?s one for ya?
Five spreadsheets, collective size around 150 MB. Knee deep in formulas, functions and figures. All five workbooks are linked to each other, thus it is necessary to open them all at one time. Unfortunately, this isn?t possible. Each time the fifth sheet is opened, you receive the following error:
"Excel cannot complete this task with available resources. Choose less data or close other apps."
Hmmm?well that sucks.
Research reveals that Excel 2002 has a formula memory limitation of 128 MB. Basically, dear reader, that means nothing can be done. I could setup a machine will a gazillion gigs of RAM and a proc that is so overclocked you could cook your dinner on it and it still wouldn?t resolve the issue.
Each version of Excel has this lil what I assume is a hard coded feature. 2000 has a 64 MB ceiling, 2002 has its 128 MB cap and 2003 has a 1 GB limitation. Ah ha you say! Ah ha indeed! Ah has all around! The answer is so simple. Upgrade to 2003, right? Well, therein lies the rub. Say you have a 3rd party app that requires 2002 (trust me, there is no way out of this) and thus, prevents you from upgrading to 2003? Yeah, that?s when you take a look around your desk, take a deep breath, smile and remember this is exactly why you chose to do this type of work.
Let the games begin?
Comments
I tackled a similar problem a while back regarding opening of a document. My issue was that I did not want the application which opened the document to reside on my current OS since I knew it would bash my runtime DLLs and I have my system humming perfectly. I thus installed VirtualPC and installed another OS with the necessary application to open up the document in question. I use VirtualPC as a "sandbox" for anything questionable when testing other people's products. I hope this gives you an alternate solution to Excel's limitations....
cheers....
Posted by: CoffeeBean | June 27, 2006 12:53 PM