This is difficult to describe, but I am wondering if anyone can point me to a way to better isolate multiple instances of Excel when running some rather heavy macros that interact with the internet and with the Windows File System. I am using Excel 2010 under Windows 7 and have have seen this on both my 32-bit and 64-bit machines. While I have not specifically seen this behavior using Excel 2013 under Window 8.1 (64-bit), I have had issues there that could be related (and yes, it took a while to get good at starting separate instances of Excel under that version).
Here is the scenario:
I open a half-dozen instances of Excel and I successfully log into an internet account via Data / Get External Data / From Web and then close the internal browser. Individually, in each Excel Instance, I open a different workbook (each workbook uses a similar set of macros) and start a macro that is expected to run for several hours gathering information from the web and possibly storing or emailing this data. They check the web every minute or so during certain hours specified in the Workbook. In general, this works reasonably well and my main issue is cpu cycles and main memory. So far so good.
Occasionally, when I open a workbook, I have noticed that another sheet in a separate instance will "blink." By "blink" what I am describing that the working area of the Excel instance (where the spreadsheet is) will go blank and then about a second later the spreadsheet previously open there will again be visible. While I have not been able to conclusively prove this, I believe that this symptom will later result in the repeating macros in one of these workbooks "hanging" without any error or warning. I have come back later only to see that it is "stuck" and then have to close and re-open the instance (sometimes using Task Manager). In a couple of situations, I rebooted the machine because I could not stop the instances from "blinking" when I opened a workbook. The reason why I am not 100% sure that this is the symptom is that I have not always noticed it prior to seeing the hanging macro problem (the affected other sheet could be on another monitor and I might not notice the "blink").
I suspect it is possible that I am initially opening the instances too quickly or that somehow my machine's memory is getting corrupt, but I am wondering if anyone else has had any similar experiences or could offer some suggestion that might allow me to minimize this occurrence. I have generally set these to run either late at night or early the next morning and expect them to run until I attend to them the next evening, thus when they hang, it can lose a day's worth of work.
I was googling the web to see if there is any way to better isolate each instance of Excel, but there appears to be no real alternative except to run each instance on a separate machine (not really possible).
Has anyone else dealt with this kind of issue? Well over 98% of the time, I have no issues with this setup, even running as many as 8 Excel instances simultaneously (and even then, it is more likely an internet connection or website problem). Yesterday, I had this problem running just 3 instances and eventually had to reboot the machine.
Thank you for any clues you can provide.
Here is the scenario:
I open a half-dozen instances of Excel and I successfully log into an internet account via Data / Get External Data / From Web and then close the internal browser. Individually, in each Excel Instance, I open a different workbook (each workbook uses a similar set of macros) and start a macro that is expected to run for several hours gathering information from the web and possibly storing or emailing this data. They check the web every minute or so during certain hours specified in the Workbook. In general, this works reasonably well and my main issue is cpu cycles and main memory. So far so good.
Occasionally, when I open a workbook, I have noticed that another sheet in a separate instance will "blink." By "blink" what I am describing that the working area of the Excel instance (where the spreadsheet is) will go blank and then about a second later the spreadsheet previously open there will again be visible. While I have not been able to conclusively prove this, I believe that this symptom will later result in the repeating macros in one of these workbooks "hanging" without any error or warning. I have come back later only to see that it is "stuck" and then have to close and re-open the instance (sometimes using Task Manager). In a couple of situations, I rebooted the machine because I could not stop the instances from "blinking" when I opened a workbook. The reason why I am not 100% sure that this is the symptom is that I have not always noticed it prior to seeing the hanging macro problem (the affected other sheet could be on another monitor and I might not notice the "blink").
I suspect it is possible that I am initially opening the instances too quickly or that somehow my machine's memory is getting corrupt, but I am wondering if anyone else has had any similar experiences or could offer some suggestion that might allow me to minimize this occurrence. I have generally set these to run either late at night or early the next morning and expect them to run until I attend to them the next evening, thus when they hang, it can lose a day's worth of work.
I was googling the web to see if there is any way to better isolate each instance of Excel, but there appears to be no real alternative except to run each instance on a separate machine (not really possible).
Has anyone else dealt with this kind of issue? Well over 98% of the time, I have no issues with this setup, even running as many as 8 Excel instances simultaneously (and even then, it is more likely an internet connection or website problem). Yesterday, I had this problem running just 3 instances and eventually had to reboot the machine.
Thank you for any clues you can provide.
