slow spreadsheet using numbers

Three questions ... how large is your hard drive and how much space is used? Second, if you bring up the Activity monitor, on the system memory tab, what are the values for page ins and page outs? Finally, if you bring up Disk Utility and do a verify disk, does it show everything is OK?

If you have less than 10% of your disk free, and no less than 5GB, that can slow down your system. Likewise, if page outs are 10% to 15% or greater of page ins, then your system can use more memory for what you run. A page out happens when the system writes memory to the hard drive to make room to run something else. Too much of that can impact performance.

So what that says is that disk space isn't a performance constraint, likewise, memory isn't a performance constraint across everything you run, and you verified your hard drive and that doesn't show any issues.

My next step would be to load your activity monitor (on hard drive in applications/utilities), then load up your spreadsheet and see if the activity monitor points out anything, ie, does CPU usage spike, or disk usage, or ?

If you're using Excel, it would be interesting if you had iWorks Numbers available to see if you have the same experience. Your system may even have the free demo that's been distributed with systems for awhile. Or you can download a free 30 day trial from http://www.apple.com/iwork/download-trial/

Using Finder, go to applications on your hard drive. Under Utilities, you'll find the Activity Monitor. Click on it to start it up ... it may start directly to your dock, so you may need to click on it there to open it up so you can view it. You'll be interested in the CPU and disk activity tabs. Bring up Numbers and your large spreadsheet and watch the activity monitor ... does the CPU start very high utilization? Or disk access, does it likewise have unusually high utilitization. If there's no joy there, then you might post your Numbers-specific question on the Numbers discussion area at https://discussions.apple.com/community/iwork/numbers

doug Davies wrote:

I do not have Excel, I am using Numbers. If you could explain how I can act on your second paragraph it would be helpful. I have no idea how to load my activity monitor, load up my spreasheet {do you mean add more lines?} and I am relatively unfamilar with the activity monitor.

You will find Activity Monitor in Applications - Utilities - Activity Monitor. You can also easily load it (or any other app) by opening Spotlight (Command + Spacebar) and typing the name of the app. Once you have AM open along with the spreadsheet look in AM to see how much RAM Numbers is using and if you see any app using a large %CPU. Another thing to check is how much FREE RAM you have. You can find that by clicking the System Memory tab in AM. Do this with the spreadsheet open. If your system is showing 500MB or less you could benefit from a RAM upgrade. It will look something like:

I see. You can try some other things like restaring in Safe Mode (hold down the Shift key on restart) this will clear some caches. However because your FREE RAM is so low with spreadsheet running, I'm pretty sure I'm correct that your system could use a RAM upgrade.

Let us know what you decide to do.

Your system is low on RAM if you upgraded to the maximum your system can accept there is a good chance your problem will dissappear. If you have already maxed out the RAM then in order to conserve RAM while you are running the spreadsheet you can quit other apps such as iTunes, Safari, Mail, etc.......

Interesting.

Thanks for posting back with your solution.