excel 2007 extememly slow on chart

[sam]

Very frustrated with this problem.
I have about 1000 data points and insert a chart (any type, such as line,
bar, or scatter) from those data, then I go "format axis" to change the
minimum or maximum from "auto" to a specific number. Afther that, whenever I
click on the plot, excel will stop responding for a couple minute. I am
dealing with large data every day. This is killing me.

[Dave F]

Hard to say what the issue is without know what your computer set up is, and
what the data is.

What's your computer's RAM? Processor speed?

Does the data contain a lot of volatile functions?

Etc.

Dave
--
A hint to posters: Specific, detailed questions are more likely to be
answered than questions that provide no detail about your problem.

[@jlathamsite.com JLatham]

Sam,
I can only sympathize with you - I just had to create some charts (a
veritable nightmare for the first time in 2007) and the chart has about 9600
data points on it (11 series with 800 points each) and it absolutely brings
my system to a grinding halt just to change the color of one of the data
series lines:
AMD X2 4800+, 2GB RAM, 1.3TB disk space - Windows XP Pro/SP2 and Office 2007
Pro. I'm not looking forward to putting as many as 50 similar charts on a
single sheet or even in a single workbook.

Just about any change made causes same type of system slowdown, took me
forever to just change one of the 11 data series lines from the default
kindergarden crayon width of 2.25 pts to .25 points so more sense could be
made out of it.

You are not alone in your misery, and I'll be watching this hoping that
someone that has got large data set charting working in a responsive manner
will drop in and tell us the secret.

[sam]

the data can be very simple. just like x- 1,2,3...1000, y-1,2,3...1000.
The problem is- if i dont change the axis option, there is no problem. it
responds very fast. only after i change the minimum or maximum of any axis,
it gets slow.
BTW, my computer is Intel core 2 duo 2.0GHz, with 1GB memory.

[@jlathamsite.com JLatham]

Dave, just for further info - the chart I mention in response to the OP just
has a lot of data points, period. The data is nothing but an 11 x 800 matrix
of numbers: no formulas, no links, no functions, just numbers (in scientific
notation as 1.04E04)

The machine is pretty quick: AMD X2 4800+ (dual core) and it's maybe 15%
slower than the Intel E6600 Core-Duo setup I have, which also suffers the
same slowdown from even the simplest action like changing an X-Y scatterchart
line width or color.

[Dave F]

Interesting, thanks.

It seems XL 07 still has some kinks to work out!

Dave
--
A hint to posters: Specific, detailed questions are more likely to be
answered than questions that provide no detail about your problem.

[@jlathamsite.com JLatham]

Interesting, because I am changing the x-axis max also. It wants to default
to 1000, but I only want it to go to 800 because it's already scrunched up
the data enough. I'll have to see if things are still as slow before
changing the x-axis limit. Of course, in my case it may just be a case of
just a very large number of points to deal with.

[@jlathamsite.com JLatham]

Possibly more than just 'some'. Been fighting this nightmare for a week now.
Some interesting points come out. After basically rewriting the code to get
it to run without failing in 2007, and in a fashion that can also be used
under Excel 2003, I find that charting is about 10-12 times slower under 2007
than it was under 2003.

Big problem may be that while creating charts in VBA code, it does not
'honor' the Application.ScreenUpdating = False command - the chart is
displayed and so is the worksheet under it with each new chart on each new
page. Same thing over in Excel 2003 keeps everything hidden until it is all
done.

The task: read 51 11x800 sets of data from a file, put each set on a
separate sheet, arrange from the 800 rows of 2 columns into an 11x800 matrix.
For second test, do the above and add graphing of the matrix to the sheet(s).

Here are some results:
System #1 - AMD 3200+ 1 GB RAM, Win XP Pro/Excel 2003
Process into Matrix: 1m 16s
Process w/Charts: 1m 21s

System #2 - AMD X2 4800+ 2 GB RAM, Win MCE/Excel 2007
Process into Matrix: 1m 37s
Process w/Charts: 12m 05s

System #3 - Intel E6600 Core-Duo 2 GB RAM, Win MCE/Excel 2007
Process into Matrix: 1m 32s
Process w/Charts: 11m 47s

The processing for the "Process into Matrix" step is EXACTLY the same code
in both the 2003 and the 2007 versions.

[MWeinberg]

I am with you Sam. I am trying to switch to Excel 2007 for data analysis
with expanded abilities. I have enjoy Excel 2007, but doing anything
(changing axis, adding more series, selecting series, etc.) results in a 20
second or more wait time for each step. I am plotting 15,000 with no
calculations on an Intel 3 GHz (hyper threading enabled) and 4 Gb of memory.
I went back to Excel 2003, and the plotting redraw and plotting changes are
very fast. I wonder if they could utilize the multiple cores for plotting as
well as calcuations. I really love the new ribbon interface and such of the
2007 products, so I hope they can figure something out for this Excel
slowdown.

[@jlathamsite.com JLatham]

Good of you to add your comments. The link to the sam's initial posting here
has been provided 'up the line' as kind of proof that what I provided to them
was not just an isolated incident on my systems. So you may also get some
satisfaction in knowing that there is a very good chance that people on the
Excel Charting team may be reading your comments also.

[MAPLE]

I could not agree more with the views expressed on this thread. I made the
very big mistake of taking a new laptop with Excel 2007,which I mistakenly
didn't test, on a long trip and found that I was unable to process the data
I was collecting. Using taskmgr it was possible to watch Excel memory use
just increase until it just ground to a halt. I'm now back in the office
using my desktop with 2003 and no problems whatsoever.

A remedy is much needed !

[khl...@googlemail.com]

On 16 Mar, 14:53, MAPLE <M...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

> A remedy is much needed !

Certainly is. Until then, after a day struggling with a fairly simple
data analysis - graphing spreadheet, I gave up and rolled back my
machine to a pre-install backup. Begone you piece of dozy bloatware !

Didn't these people actually try it on a real world spreadsheet before
letting it out of the door ? Or does time pass faster in Redmont ?

[krlanes]

I have this same problem on just about every spreadsheet. My machine is a
quad processor Opteron 285 running XP x64 with 8GB of RAM with a 5 disk 15K
RPM RAID 5. Basic X-Y plots seem to work fine but if you select any of the
nice formats like the ones with black backgrounds you have this problem. I
have a worksheet open now that has three 1700 point X-Y plots on it. I can do
nothing with it. I can't touch the plot or the excel becomes non responsive.
It currently is using 100% CPU and 500,000K of memory and will sit like that
for 30 minutes, maybe longer. I've tried several times to select a tab
without the chart. In all fairness it did warn me when I selected the format
that complex charts can take a long time. I don't think three curves is a
complex chart. I have a lot of 20-40 MB Excel files so I think I know my way
around Excel but this is really poor. I have see the same behavior on my Dual
Core Intel Laptop. This is not a system configuration problem. Still compute
bound as I finish this post now leaveling off at 717,000K and 100% CPU for a
9 MB .XLSB file
--
Thanks

Kurt