Excel running slow on new MBP 13' 2020 (i5 10th gen/16gb/512gb)

[Drum92]

Hello everyone,

I have just bought my first MBP (i5 10th gen/16gb/512gb).

Today I was working with a relatively large dataset. And I used an INDEX/MATCH array function to re-organize my dataset.
When dragging down the formula with "cmd + D" the MBP takes AGES to load, it has been calculating for >10 minutes and still has not finished.

Is this normal? Has anyone experienced something similar?
Is there any particular setting I should disable/enable to make it quicker?

Many thanks in advance!

 

[Drum92]

UPDATE:

I just run the same formula on an old Windows machine and it calculated it in less than 2 minutes. I am quite sure that it is not a problem of hardware/performance but more of compatibility with excel.

 

[mkelly]

You're right in that it isn't likely to be a hardware problem. Word/Excel/Powerpoint for Mac aren't direct ports of the Windows versions. There are differences throughout the code. I'm betting your spreadsheet unfortunately exercises some unoptimized bit of code in Excel that is running way slower than the equivalent code on Windows does.

Depending on how much troubleshooting you feel like doing, you could try installing a copy of Windows & Excel in a virtual machine (e.g. https://virtualbox.org, Parallels, VMware or similar) and see how it performs there. The VM will cause it to take a performance hit, but I bet you'll still find it running much faster than the Mac version. That will eliminate the hardware as the bottleneck.

You could also try an alternative spreadsheet like LibreOffice (https://libreoffice.org), and compare its performance to both the Windows and Mac versions of Excel.

(I know neither of these are great solutions going forward, just ideas to confirm the problem being the Mac version of Excel as opposed to the hardware.)

Another thought... I wonder if auto-recalculation on the Mac version is getting in its own way. Try disabling auto-recalculation on the spreadsheet, doing the fill-down, then having it calculate everything at once:

1. Go to the Forumulas tab
2. Under Calculation Options (far right) choose Manual
3. Fill down as you did before
4. Click "Calculate now" on the Formulas tab

Don't forget to re-enable auto calculation when you're done!

(again, not a great long-term solution but it might show where the problem lies in Excel)

 

[Cyprusian]

Have you tried using the newer XMATCH function instead of MATCH?

 

[Drum92]

Hello,

So I got in touch with Microsoft and got an updated version of Excel and now the calculation is done super quickly. I still think maybe I need to keep manual calculation as mkelly suggested on that sheet cause at the beginning when I open it, the sheets shows calculation (Threads) x%. The calculation restart every time I click on a point in the tab unless it reached 100%.