Excel Max Rows

[monbri]

Can anyone tell me why Excel is limited to 64,000 rows? A lot of people in my office would like to know why MS has limited the program to this amount of rows.

Often we have data rows that far exceed 64,000 and have to resort to Access. Not many people are familar with Access.

 

[Zack Barresse]

The next version of Excel will have more. You can probably Google this and get many results.

As to the Why? Well, why is the sky blue? Because it was their perogative. That's the design they came up with and I'm sure they had many limiting factors involved. That is probably the biggest complaint of Excel users, the rows/columns. So in Office 2007 you get your wish.

 

[monbri]

Thanks for the info.

 

[lenze]

To maybe further explain why, I believe it is because of the way Excel is run by the OS. When you open an Excel file, you are in reality loading a copy of that file from the hard drive into your RAM. That's why you have to save a file when you make changes. This is different from Access, which links the computer to the file ON the hard drive. That's why in Access, when you make a change, it is immediate to the file. Remember, back in the mid 90's, most machines had limited RAM. Memory was very expensive and most machines simply could not load files with more than 65536 rows. Today, however, computers have ample RAM (memory is cheap) and so the more row option is feasible.

lenze

 

[monbri]

Thank You

Excellent information.

Thanks

 

[JerryGiese]

I believe the reason is to limit the file size. When you have 65536 rows, it takes 16 bits to specify the row (2^16 = 65536) and 8 bits (2^8 = 256) for the columns making a 24bit cell address. The more rows and columns, the more bits per cell. Therefore the larger the file. That is just my theory.