Memory error In Excel 2007

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I’m using Office 2007 on a Dell XPS with 4GB of RAM. On occasion I’ll get an error message while in Excel that the application is suddenly out of memory. The screen will no longer refresh, half an error message will appear, image on the screen is partly gone, etc. The only fix is to exit Excel and reopen it. I have plenty of memory and not much being utilized. A Google app on my desktop indicates that I have at least 2 GB of RAM available + a fixed sized swap file when this problem surfaces. What am I missing?

Specs:
Windows XP, SP3, current on all patches. DELL XPS 630i, 6MB, 3.16 GHZ, 1,333 FSB, INTEL CORE 2 E8500, DUAL CORE 6MB CACHE; 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at RAM;800MHz – 4 DIMMs memory; nVidia GeForce 9800 GT 512MB video card

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Try repairing the Office installation – Control Panel, Add/Remove.

cheers, Paul

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1. Clearing the Windows Temp file won’t hurt anything and off times makes most things better… Start | Run | %temp%
2. Does the problem occur with just one/two particular files?
….If so what is the file size? Are there are large number of charts or objects… Home (tab) | Find & Select | Go to Special | Objects
….Are there a large number of Styles? 50 or so is normal in xl2007, several thousand and you are in trouble.
3. xl2007 comes with a “Diagnostics” utility… Big Round Button | Excel Options (button) | Resources | Run…Diagnostics.
‘–
Jim Cone
Portland, Oregon USA
Cleanup Formats/Styles add-in

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Good idea, Jim. The diagnostics all came back clean except the first one involving “known solutions.” It connected me to a M/S web page that was supposed to offer help. Page says, “This web page unavailable.” Figures. Sigh.

I clean the temp folders each week.

It does not seem to be file specific. No objects found at all in the last offending file. When I do a print preview on the entire workbook, no charts appear. I can see them if I preview a single tab (sheet), but not for all. (101kb in size) I can edit, etc. What does that mean?

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Re: “What does that mean?”

I don’t know. And my idea bag is pretty limited.
You should make sure your printer drivers are up to date and if that
makes no difference try another printer on your system.
‘–
Jim Cone
Portland, Oregon USA
Special Sort add-in

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Change in printers made no difference. I still no graphs.

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A few hundred charts in a workbook will probably cause problems.
If you don’t have that many, you could try moving a sheet at a time to another workbook and test the new workbook after each sheet is added.
You may find one sheet/charts that is causing the trouble. (or you may not).
Of course, if your problems exists in nearly all workbooks then the above is a time waster.

On the other hand, the problem could be hardware related.
This diagnostic tool (from Microsoft) helped me out one time by finding a bad ram chip…
Windows Memory Diagnostic
Even if your problem is something else (most likely) this tool is nice to have in the drawer.
Good Luck,
‘–
Jim Cone
Portland, Oregon USA
Excel add-ins

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Excel running out of memory has nothing to do with the amount of RAM that you have. Windows puts aside a certain amount of RAM to keep track of programs and files that are running. Closing Excel releases the amount of memory that it was using on this section Opening it again creates the Out of Memory error.

Change your swap file to one that is dynamic.

Follow the instructions fo Jim Cone who suggested you move the charts out to another sheet to see which one(s) are causing the issue. Several charts based on a single set of data can cause issues if the system is attempting to update them all before printing.

Following everyone else’s advice, I also add, Good luck.

Is it possible to get a copy of the file?

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Just an additional thought. If you have any COM add-ins running and don’t need (few are ever needed), they can cause Excel to run out of memory. To remove in Excel 2007, select Office Button, Excel Options, Add-ins. Change Manage Excel add-ins to Manage COM add-ins and then click Go. Uncheck all you do not need.

If you are using HP printers, we have had reports that they cause memory/display problems. We switched to Brothers and Canons and have not had problems.

Lastly, exiting Excel every hour or so tends to avoid issues.

Bob Flanagan
http://www.add-ins.com

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I’m a lecturer in Business Computing teaching Word, Excel and Access, and the Excel “no chart shown in print preview” error appears regularly in our computer labs. Ironically all labs have the same image installed but this problem occurs sporadically and can pop up in any lab at any time, Closing Excel and reopening the file seems to cure the problem If it’s any consolation I also regularly have problems when running my laptop at home where Excel doesn’t seem to recognise I am no longer attached to my work network, and creeps along at snails pace until I go to print options and select my home printer. This would reinforce the opinion that the printer connection is the main culprit.

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Re: Missing graphs in print preview (Excel 2007, W XP Pro):

Farokh: I tried moving each tab to a new sheet. In Test # 1, graph preview still failed when I got to tab # 3, the same “failing” tab in my original document. I discovered that if I removed tab # 1, the doc would display all the way to tab # 5 and then it failed again.

For Test # 2, I moved tabs to a third blank book beginning with tab # 5 and it would not display when I added just one more tab (# 6). It failed with 2 tabs!

1. I’m not sure what this tells me.

2. BTW: This same original Excel sheet displays in print preview perfectly in Excel 2007 at work; can I concluded that the problem is not with the original document itself?

3. Thanks Robyn for the input. Do you get the out of memory error too? Perhaps this display-failure is a known Excel glitch? Anyone know?

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All versions of Excel are sensitive to printer drivers, especially where charts are concerned, but 2007 does seem to be worse than most. I assume your copy has SP2 and all subsequent updates applied?

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I am current on all security patches. Excel 2007 (12.0.4518.1014) MSO (12.0.4518.1014).

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I did some digging and discovered that although I’m current on all security patches, I had not gotten any Office updates. I’m not sure why they didn’t appear in my list, but I finally got to see them and then uploaded and installed some 300 MB of patches including SP 2. My Excel ‘display of graphs’ issue is now resolved. We’ll see about the memory issue. I am puzzled as to why I didn’t get the Office updates. Auto update is off and I do custom installs regularly. Hmmm.

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