Excel - Running model and VBA - PLEASE HELP

[samkhazary]

Hey do you guys think the macbook air can handle large excel sheets, intensive formulas/sheets, and large VBA workbooks?

I do a lot of financial modeling and was curious if the processor and amount of ram can handle huge excel workbook with extensive calculations?

Other than that I don't really use my laptop for anything but web browsing and email... just have XP setup thru boot-camp/fusion... Just wondering if this can handle hard core excel stuff.... if not I'm afraid I have to go back to the bulky MBP....

I really could use any advice possible you guys can offer... I'm brand new with a mac, been a windows user my whole life and switched over last month.

 

[Gemba]

Haven't got my MBA yet so can't provide reassurance of large Excel model performance (albeit I assume it will be adequate for most mortals). However, one thing you need to be aware of if you are new to Apple is that MS Office 2008 does not support VBA so if you rely on Excel spreadsheets with macros they will not run on the Mac version. Yes, I couldn't believe it either!

PS Of course you can run XP Excel on the MBA via Bootcamp, Parallels or Fusion

 

[ProPedderKustom]

Haven't got my MBA yet so can't provide reassurance of large Excel model performance (albeit I assume it will be adequate for most mortals). However, one thing you need to be aware of if you are new to Apple is that MS Office 2008 does not support VBA so if you rely on Excel spreadsheets with macros they will not run on the Mac version. Yes, I couldn't believe it either!

PS Of course you can run XP Excel on the MBA via Bootcamp, Parallels or Fusion

Yep! I came to the same startling discovery about Office 2008 not supporting VBA. I use the Data Analysis Toolpak and the Solver Toolpak, neither of which were supported in Office 2008. I now have an 8GB Windows XP partition that just has Office 2007, Firefox, and Trend Micro Internet Security 2008 on it....have about 1.5GB free after software installs and massive XP updates. Works perfectly though and with the FAT32 system format for the XP partition I can easily write, read, and delete from OS X anything I make or edit in XP.

 

[mctheriot]

It will support "pure" older macros but nothing in or converted to VBA.

At first I thought the MBA was struggling a little re'calcing large sheets but I upgraded to 2008 at the same time and I'm finding 2008 to be exceptionally buggy (it crashes, even brought my whole system down once! Gave me Win flash-backs!, and on a simple Excel sheet - just sitting there - I got an "Out of Memory" message! WTF)

It's been confirmed in may posts that this is common on any machine with 2008. I loaded a copy of 2004 and it was acceptable though.

Mark

Haven't got my MBA yet so can't provide reassurance of large Excel model performance (albeit I assume it will be adequate for most mortals). However, one thing you need to be aware of if you are new to Apple is that MS Office 2008 does not support VBA so if you rely on Excel spreadsheets with macros they will not run on the Mac version. Yes, I couldn't believe it either!

PS Of course you can run XP Excel on the MBA via Bootcamp, Parallels or Fusion

 

[samkhazary]

Is it running quick enough thru XP on the partitioned drive? I still can't believe they left VBA out of 2008, what a deal killer.