Am I Excel-constrained or RAM-constrained

I have an Excel file that I have been adding things to for about 3 years. Over time it has grown and grown and grown.

However, in the last few days, the file seems to be too big.

It's only a 4 MB file itself, which isn't that big of a deal. But according to the Windows task manager, it requires over 1.6 GB of memory to run.

The file itself consists of hundreds of tabs, hundreds of named ranges in the name manager, and a tiny bit of VBA (the VBA cycles through a list of about 150 different sites to present a customized set of reports for that site).

Obviously I need to get this data put together in something other than Excel eventually, but right now, I just need it to work.

So, is this file memory constrained? (I've got 8 GB RAM and a Core i7 processor and plenty of storage so I'd go get 16 GB of RAM in this case).

Or am I reaching the limits of Excel? (In which case, I've got de-cruftify this file somewhat.)

Bonus question: why does this file need 1.6 GB of RAM to operate, anyway?

Time is critical - any help would certainly be appreciated.

1 - It's slowing down the whole machine. It also partially crashes often - that is, it still sort of works, but I can't change the tab at the top to the "File" tab. Sometimes it won't save, and I get the error message "Document not saved."

2 - I do not have a main data entry tab. Most of the tabs are small sets of data, and the remaining tabs use a vlookup to get that data. End home goes to the lower right hand corner of the data on the page.

I have a feeling it's the number of name ranges - I've never counted them, but if I delete everything and save the "blank" file, it's still 1.2 MB. Once I delete all of the names in the the name manager, then the file is as small as a blank Excel file is. Maybe over 500 named ranges? I think having over 500 named ranges and over 200 tabs is somehow the problem.

I'm hoping it's a memory problem--if so, I'm off to the local store to get two sticks of 8GB RAM. If not.......well, I'm fucked.

Big report due tomorrow.

(No one would design anything like this on purpose - I was a n00b three years ago and pretty exited that I could make a single page report for 150 sites automagically.......but once that happened, everybody and their little sister whanted to be included in the report, plus keep the historical data......and the file kept getting bigger and crazier. As long as it worked, I didn't mind the sort of insane spaghetti it had become. But now...... )

Ok, it's about 350 named ranges. Not as much as I thought.

It's also about 370 data tabs and 60 "display" pages. So, more than I thought.

Originally Posted by Pepe Le Mokko

Do you have many volatile functions? If so, switch to manual calcualtions and hit F9 AFTER entering the data.

There are a hojillion vlookups against the hundreds of data tables. The link didn't specify that vlookup was volatile? Does that help?