# MS Excel- how big is safe? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 1, 2007, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ms-excel-how-big-is-safe/424815 "2007-11-01T01:56:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![rbroome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/838e76/32.png) [@rbroome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rbroome)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2007, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ms-excel-how-big-is-safe/424815/1 "2007-11-01T01:56:20Z")
I have an MS Excel spreadsheet that I have been working on for several years. It isn’t really that big-740K-but it is all numbers and links. Recently opening in Excel X on the Mac causes Excel to crash. restarting Excel allows me to open the file without problems. My question is: are there any guidelines/rules for determining when an Excel sprdsht is getting dangerously big? thanks ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2007, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ms-excel-how-big-is-safe/424815/2 "2007-11-01T02:14:49Z")
I am a business systems analyst/developer and I regularly use Excel spreadsheets that are over 100mb and they generally work just fine. However, Excel is a very powerful tool but it still has more bugs and kinks than any major piece of software that I know of. I have found numerous true bugs myself over the years and we have very important spreadsheets go corrupt on a regular basis and the best minds can’t figure it out. We had a 100mb spreadsheet get corrupted yesterday as a matter of fact and I got a call to consult on it. I found no reason yet again so we restored from our ample backups. Your spreadsheet is very small in size so that isn’t the problem but keep backups in case something goes wrong. ---
**Author:** ![shijinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@shijinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shijinn)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2007, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ms-excel-how-big-is-safe/424815/3 "2007-11-01T09:18:10Z")
/sidetrack i wonder if it’s possible to crash google spreadsheets the same way, or would it just take forever to load? ---
**Author:** ![zut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zut/32/2875_2.png) [@zut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zut)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2007, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ms-excel-how-big-is-safe/424815/4 "2007-11-01T13:02:41Z")
Anecdotally: I work with fairly large spreadsheets (on a PC, not a Mac), although not as large as **Shagnasty** does. Spreadsheets that had a lot of _calculations_ caused Excel to slow, and sometimes crash. One of the symptoms was what (I think) **rbroome** is seeing: I could open the file by _first_ starting Excel, and _then_ opening the file, but I couldn’t start the file in Excel in one go. The solution was getting more system memory–I doubled the memory size, and the problems went away. Everything opened fine, and recalcs that formerly took minutes now took less than a second. ---
**Author:** ![rbroome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/838e76/32.png) [@rbroome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rbroome)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2007, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ms-excel-how-big-is-safe/424815/5 "2007-11-01T23:27:44Z")
[QUOTE=zut] Anecdotally: I work with fairly large spreadsheets (on a PC, not a Mac), although not as large as **Shagnasty** does. Spreadsheets that had a lot of _calculations_ caused Excel to slow, and sometimes crash. One of the symptoms was what (I think) **rbroome** is seeing: I could open the file by _first_ starting Excel, and _then_ opening the file, but I couldn’t start the file in Excel in one go. The solution was getting more system memory–I doubled the memory size, and the problems went away. Everything opened fine, and recalcs that formerly took minutes now took less than a second. [/QUOTE] Thanks all. I figured the raw size of the file wouldn’t be an issue but didn’t know for sure. I certainly do keep multiple backups. About the only thing that the spreadsheet does that is unusual for me is that it has a long list of variable names (100s). A holdover from when I first created it. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But I will continue to rely on backups and when Excel crashes, restart the app.