Getting slower: most operations take about one minute.

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Level 2

303 points

Getting slower: most operations take about one minute.

Hi all,

I am editing a spreadsheet using Numbers 2.3 on an early 2011 MacBook Pro. The spreadsheet has four sheets, each about 1,200 rows and about 14 columns. Each sheet has some references to one other sheet. Most operations take about one minute to complete, while some things take only a second or two. During the lengthy operations, Numbers displays the spinning beach ball, CPU usage on one CPU core goes to 100% and Activity Monitor says that Numbers is "Not Responding". After the minute goes by, all is well, so it didn't hang, it's just busy. Even just changing the text of a header cell shows the same behavior. This seems far longer than it took in weeks past - it seems like something changed that made everything work much more slowly.

Does anyone know if this reflects a problem with the spreadsheet itself and, if so, what can be done about it?

Thanks,

Scott

Posted on Dec 11, 2017 9:53 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Wayne Contello

Level 7

26,529 points

Dec 11, 2017 1:19 PM in response to WoodPlane

I think its much faster. Overall, I switched to Number 4.x and never looked back. However… you should keep version 2.x around because it can open QXF (Quicken files) for banks. What's more... 2.x appears to be a dead-end product at this point.

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Answer 2

WoodPlane Author

Level 2

303 points

Dec 11, 2017 1:11 PM in response to Wayne Contello

I'm running Mac OS 10.11.6. There's 8 GB or RAM, and Activity Monitor does not show any unusual disk activity while Numbers is spinning.

I made a copy of the spreadsheet and opened it with Numbers 3.2.2. Initially, without doing anything, it used 100% of all four CPU cores for about a minute, then calmed down. When I tried to make a change, it asked if I wanted to upgrade the spreadsheet to Numbers 3. After that everything worked very quickly. As I remember it, large spreadsheets used to work just as fast with Numbers 2.3.

I prefer Numbers 2, but if there are known problems with Numbers 2.3 (I know of one now), then I may be forced to use a newer version.

Is there a compelling reason to upgrade to Numbers 4?

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Answer 3

WoodPlane Author

Level 2

303 points

Dec 11, 2017 1:28 PM in response to Wayne Contello

Would it be better to run Numbers 2.3 under a different Mac OS partition?

Is there any danger of one version clobbering the other version's data, like preferences, etc?

Frequently the file names remain the same from one version to another, even though the content and format may have changed.

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Answer 4

Dec 11, 2017 2:16 PM in response to WoodPlane

I have run both versions for several years now. So issues I can attribute to one contaminating the other. The file format of 4.x is different and, therefore, is not backward compatible with Numbers 2.x. Numbers 4.x can export to Numbers 2.x

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Answer 5

Dec 11, 2017 12:30 PM in response to WoodPlane

what version of macOS are you using? Have you tried duplicating the file in question and opening the copy in the newer version of Numbers (ver 4.x)?

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