Excel for Mac Running Very slow

No one in this thread is showing the operating system or how much memory their computer has. Using Lion with 4GB of RAM, the Office 2011 programs are dogs. Bump up the RAM as little as 2GB (to 6GB but preferably 8GB) and the difference is amazing. Even so, Excel is still the slowest of the lot.

Hi,

if it runs PERFECT with OpenOffice and with Office 2003 in a virtual environment I don't care about the hardware configuration. The native MS Office is MUCH slower - that's the reason why I don't like MS Office, but I've to use it as so many others must do... :-(

in my case, Excel 2011 "runs" on a MBP17", 2.4 GHz i7, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, OS X 10.7.4, Excel 14.2.2

you can use iWork it is made by apple.

it supports all ms office formats i.e. .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx etc.

it is a nice collection of apps.

mac app store link

Download Now

- whith this particular HUGE excel file, Numbers (iWork) is very slow, not as slow as Excel 2011, but still MUCH slower than OpenOffice and Office 2003 running in my virutal environment (it's Windows with Parallels and it is faster!)

- there is no 100% compatibility

I LOVE iWork - for personal use, not for business (compatibility issues)

one important hint: my huge Excel file here has a lot of filters, if I remove them scrolling is well. As I said before, OpenOffice and Win Office 2003 with active column filters don't have any issues regarding performance.

I have the same problem. Running 10.7.4 on a MacAir with Excel for Mac 2011. The only solution I found so far is to create a new (standard) user. Running the same spreadsheet is up to speed when logged in as the new user. But still haven't figured how to get Excel to run fast when logged in as administrator. Tried to delete duplicate fonts in Font Books App as suggested over web, but didn't see difference. Also suggested was to delete microsoft excel prefs in Library, but couldn't find them.

I have the same problem... Upgrade from Notebook HP to Macbook air, i5 1,8GHz, 4gb 1600MHz DDR3, Excel 2011....

It is IMPOSSIBLE to use Excel on Mac... Can't scroll.. Can't edit cells... Can't SELECT cells...

I tryed every tip told above, but still doesn't work for me!

Please, someone help us..

Thanks,

Lucas

Lucas,

Have you tried to creating and logging in as a new user? I can only run my large excel files when I login as user other than the main admistrator. So just create a new user with System Preferences under 'Users and Groups'. Log out of the main user, and log back in as the new user. Excel speed difference 100x in large files. No problems with small spreadsheets. Using Excel for Mac 2011 version 14.2.4 on Macbook Air running 10.7.5

Hope this works. Good luck.

Leo

Leo,

Thanks for reply. I made it, but no result.

I have to create a Virtual Machine and use the Windows Excel instead the Mac Excel.

That is no good, because im trying to homologate the Mac OSX to my company and i'm facing a lot of problems.

Regards,

Lucas

The Mac version of Excel is slower than the Windows version, but not to the degree that you are experiencing. There must be something wrong. Have you attempted reinstalling office after doing a complete delete. Have you taken a look at the activity monitor while running Excel? I use the program daily and I'm not experiencing anything like what you are describing.

I never had any problems with Excel until I got a new Macbook Pro over the holidays (Jan 2013) with Mountain Lion pre-installed. Then Excel just began running incredibly slow as everyone here has experienced.

It definitely seems to be a Font related problem, and since I could create a new user on my machine and Excel ran fine from that login, I did some detective work with fonts and worked out a way to strip down fonts in my regular account log in.

Keep in mind that I don't do any work with fonts really, so it didn't matter to me if I lost any special fonts because I never actively installed any...just accumulated alot of extra fonts over the years from various apps and rolling my data over through multiple Macbook incarnations.

This is how I got everything running at normal speed again.

1) Open Font Book Application

2) Under EDIT, select LOOK FOR ENABLED DUPLICATES

3) Automatically resolve any duplicates found

4) Select all fonts, then under FILE select VALIDATE FONT

5) Remove all fonts showing any type of error or warning. Some will be system fonts and will require you to enter your password…go ahead and do it…get them all out of your system.

6) Under FILE, select RESTORE STANDARD FONTS. This will pull out everything except standard fonts. You will probably get a message saying that some of the standard fonts are missing and asking you to restore them by reinstalling the operating system…don't bother doing it though. The missing fonts are likely ones that got tossed out when you VALIDATED FONT and threw out the ones causing warnings/errors.

7) Open your OS Library and look for the FONT folder. You should also see FONTS (REMOVED) and FONTS DISABLED. Open the FONTS (REMOVED) folder and find the MICROSOFT folder. Drag this back into your FONTS folder…it will proceed to copy over. i.e. a copy will remain in FONTS (REMOVED) and a new copy will be formed in FONTS.

8) Finally, for good measure use Disk Utility to repair disk permissions and then restart.

This processed worked on my brand new Macbook Pro running Mountain Lion, as well as my wife's 2 year old Macbook Pro running Mountain Lion.

I spent 3 hours searching forums and testing things yesterday and this finally worked...hopefully it can save others from wasting as much time as I was forced to.

Thank you. Deleting duplicate and validating fonts worked great. Excel is working quickly now.

I also experienced extreme slow down in Excel but not all the time. I cleaned up fonts and it happened less often. Today it did it again and I systematically closed down running programs then relaunched and tested typing speed in Excel each time. No change till I quit Dreamweaver 4 and then Excel was fine. This may or may not apply specifically to others but it shows that another program can affect Excel to the point that just typing in a cell takes approx a second per character to appear.

This really solved my problem!!! Thanks!!