32-bit Excel add-ins.

[Darren Bartrup]

I recently kicked up a bit of a fuss at work as I have 64-bit windows with 8gb of ram, but running 32-bit Office 365 which made no sense to me.

The reason I was given is that "a lot of systems use add-ins and they generally only support 32 bit".
To me this smelled of BS. It feels a bit like still running XP or IE6.

The only add-in I use is SAP Analysis, which is also available as a 64 bit. My 32 bit version regularly crashes and removes the data from my spreadsheet.
I've been given the option of getting the 64 bit version, but seeing as I develop spreadsheets for use by everyone else it makes sense to use what everyone else uses. I just have to put up with the out of memory errors I get every now and then.

I guess my question/discussion is - are there many add-ins out there that only have a 32-bit version?
I know that's a big topic as anyone can make an add-in, but surely the big companies like SAP, Oracle, etc will have 64-bit versions of any add-ins they've built?

 

[starl]

When 64bit was released, a big reason to keep 32bit was because most addins were only 32bit compatible and making them 64bit compatible was a headache (since it was all still new). Also, 64bit was slightly unstable and workbooks used on both could crash.

It's been a while now, though and many addins are compatible in both (or there are separate versions). Personally, I still use 32bit on my main machine, though I do have 64bit available for testing since some clients use 64bit. Yet, I still do the design on the 32bit.

Frankly, the only reason I can think of to install the 64bit (especially when you're sharing workbooks with 32bit) is if you need the extra oomph provided by 64bit. Note that only 8gb ram might limit any improvements. If you're going to switch, you're going to want to investigate the compatibility of all your addins, in Excel and other Office programs.

 

[diddi]

i have x64 Office 2010. was running x86. tbh there is very little improvement in performance even though i do write some CPU intensive applications and HDD file crunching etc. i would not bother switching if i had to pay. i was given the x64 version. By far the best way to improve your excel experiance is to have a good SSD eg samsung Evo 970.
if you use API, you will need to mod your code to use x64

 

[Oaktree]

If you're using large amounts of data, there is absolutely a reason to switch to 64 bit, and it's because the 32 bit version only lets Excel use 2GB of RAM - regardless of how much your computer has. Having 32 GB of RAM installed but having Excel crash when it reaches the 2GB limit is something you learn the hard way.

That said, I believe the answer to the OP's question is that most of your enterprise type add-ins have 64 bit versions by now ... but, not all of them do. IMO, far too many software clients still pretend that people would prefer to use their front end vs. having a clean add-in for Excel, but I digress.

 

[Darren Bartrup]

Thanks for the replies. I've only had it crash a couple of times and that may have been down to the number of workbooks I had open at the time.
I'll have to look into whether the specific add-ins are available in 64 & 32, but doesn't seem to be as big a problem as I first thought.

Having some people on Windows 7 (due to some system that doesn't work on Windows 10), some on Windows 10, some with Excel 2007, Excel 2016, earlier 365 builds (no XLOOKUP) is a whole different kettle of fish. Didn't even realise until people complained they were getting #NAME errors on my reports.

 

[Jon von der Heyden]

If you're using large amounts of data, there is absolutely a reason to switch to 64 bit, and it's because the 32 bit version only lets Excel use 2GB of RAM - regardless of how much your computer has. Having 32 GB of RAM installed but having Excel crash when it reaches the 2GB limit is something you learn the hard way.

That said, I believe the answer to the OP's question is that most of your enterprise type add-ins have 64 bit versions by now ... but, not all of them do. IMO, far too many software clients still pretend that people would prefer to use their front end vs. having a clean add-in for Excel, but I digress.

I second this.