Excel a nightmare on new M1 iMac

honkin

Active Member
Joined
Mar 20, 2012
Messages
385
Office Version
  1. 2016
Platform
  1. MacOS
Just wondering if anyone has any experience with Excel running so poorly on Apple's new iMacs with their own M1 chip? I have found it a nightmare. A brand new machine and the latest version of Excel for Mac, yet as soon as Excel opens, it grabs close to 7Gb of memory, even with a file open with zero formulas or calculations in it. If utilising a file with lots of rows and formulas, it is an absolute nightmare, with Excel maxing out the physical RAM

The integrated memory in this beast is supposed to be the ants pants, but either Excel is struggling to utilise it correctly, or something in the setup is amiss.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to alleviate this, I'm all ears

cheers
 

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If A2:A50000 contain data. Enter a formula in B2. Select B2. Double-click the Fill Handle and Excel will shoot the formula down to B50000.
i have the 16gb version M1 macbookpro Laptop not imac and no issue
I have lots of excel instances open maybe 10-20 at a time
And i dont seem to have an issue
i also have 2 email programs open ,
chrome with about 20 tabs open
Photo app
Whatsapp
Sonus app

at the moment on the activity monitor - its using 700mb
 

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i have the 16gb version M1 macbookpro Laptop not imac and no issue
I have lots of excel instances open maybe 10-20 at a time
And i dont seem to have an issue
i also have 2 email programs open ,
chrome with about 20 tabs open
Photo app
Whatsapp
Sonus app

at the moment on the activity monitor - its using 700mb
cheers etaf

So odd, then, as I might have either Chrome or Brave open with maybe 5 or 6 tabs, then try to work in a single 50Mb Excel file and immediately as I open that file, excel grabs more than 6Gb of physical RAM and if I am doing some autofiltering with calculations, that physical RAM usage can max out, with CleanMyMacX bringing up a warning of RAM usage. The swap file is hardly used at all; maybe 2 or 3Gb while this occurs

Mine is also a 16Gb version, though as you already know, the iMac rather than Macbook

Not really sure what to do, as it seem excessive

Thanks for your reply
 
Upvote 0
the spreadsheet i have are not as big as yours , so that maybe the issue
I used to work with large excel files , but since retiring no longer do that and only had the m1 a few months anyway

What happens if you open a smaller file - is it just this one spreadsheet ?

i had one spreadsheet from a different forum which really slowed excel down - just looked at it again, and its doing a lot of array formulas and calculating each time
the Memory was still only 468mb as its a small file - But CPU goes up beyond 75% because of all the volatile functions and ranges are A to APB

There are some really good Mac specific forums maybe worth posting on one of those forums - I used a lot , when i first got a Macbookpro in 2017 - which i still use for specific tasks, but only had 256GB SD and 8GB Ram.
 
Upvote 0

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