Can't open a 45MB Excel file on a 2.8GHz PC, but can on a 500MHz Mac??!?

Hi

I am having a weird "experience", and I was wondering if anyone else has had the same problem. So at work there's this Excel file that's mostly databases in different worksheets, and also quite a bit of calculations on these databases, and it has grown to 45MB since last month, when it was 38MB. It has grown to be this size on a 5-year-old, 500MHz Mac. The Mac has no problems opening it, closing it, doing stuff to it, whatever.

I have a 1.5-year-old P4 2.8GHz PC. When I try to open it, Task Manager shows that CPU activity goes to 100% and stays there until I End Task it. The RAM doesn't seem to be the issue here since I have 1GB RAM, and Excel only goes up to about 162MB when it freezes (with everything else taking up only about 150MB more). Whaaa?

I could understand if neither computer could open it, since the Mac person who used it last added a lot of formulas to analyze the data and what not. But.... Huh?

Does that mean Macs are better than PCs??? Ick!

Malia

 

Did you try checking microsoft's knowledgebase for articles on this issue? That's exactly the type of problem where I'd suspect Excel itself to be the culprit.

Also...was the revision of Office you use on your PC newer than the Mac one? They don't line up exactly...so you need to make sure there were no features being utilized on it that you don't have available on your PC.

Also, re-copy it in case there was some data corruption during transfer(unlikely).

As a last resort...install Open Office 2.0 onto your PC and open the excel file with that instead. Perhaps it'll still work.

 

if the version on the pc was newer and they were doing all the work on the mac, then the "newer" pc version wouldn't be the one having something incompatible, it would be the "older" version on the macs.

You can take this as a sign that macs are better then wintel machines

 

Can you open other Excel files?

Also you may try to use other software like Lotus or Quattro Pro to make sure that it is not because of the file.

 

this is incorrect. for example: the "newer" version of outlook 2003 is imcompatible with other versions.

to the OP; it sounds like a versioning conflict, not a hardware problem.

 

If you read what I wrote...you just reiterated the same statement I made. Mac and PC versions of Office are not all off similar revisions. (i.e. Office 97 vs 98). So he should verify what features were being used.

 

Maybe you can save it like a excel 97 version and not a 2003 version if you have not the same versions on both machine's

 

Good idea about saving as Excel 97. I'll try it when I get back to work. Why?

Well, I can open it no problem on a super old PC with Excel 97 installed! It takes up only 10MB of RAM to keep it open, too!

I tried downloading OpenOffice. It has some serious difficulties opening it. After about a minute, it opens the whole thing, taking up most of my RAM (total used by all apps readches .99GB, and normally they're using under 200MB), and once it opens it, the amount of RAM used drops to 400MB. That's right, 400MB just for it to sit there and do nothing.

Still, it's better than Excel 2003, cause Excel hangs when it reaches 125MB or 163MB RAM (don't know why it varies). Ok, tomorrow is when I have to actually do stuff with that file, so we'll see how it goes! ::fingers crossed::

Malia (I'm a "she" btw)

 

again, i'd say it's a versioning issue. plug in your specs on ms's support search and see if there's a white paper on it.

 

Ahh... here is a little wisdom - Microsoft vs Apple = Windows vs MacOS = Disaster vs Stability = Ugly vs Beautiful.... on and on can we all go .

 

Well Malia,
did it work?

 

Thats the whole thing. If you write a software product to run on two operating systems they should be compatible. I don't support Microsoft anymore for reasons just like this.