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- Path: sparky!uunet!van-bc!eosvcr!aew
- From: aew@eosvcr.wimsey.bc.ca (Alan Walford)
- Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.apps
- Subject: Excel 4 Users Beware ! - Do not use many worksheets
- Message-ID: <rBwXrAnJBh107h@eosvcr.wimsey.bc.ca>
- Date: Thu, 21 Jan 93 14:58:35 -0800
- Reply-To: aew@eosvcr.wimsey.bc.ca
- Organization: Eos Systems Inc, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
- Lines: 39
-
- Dear Excel 4 Users,
-
- I thought I'd warn you about an Excel feature that just burned me
- quite badly.
-
- I thought the Workbook concept was really useful. So I started to
- use it and create bound worksheets.
-
- After I hit about 20 worksheets (for a relatively small financial
- model) things started to get weird. It complains alot about not
- enough memory. It starts drawing things incorrectly and it has
- trouble saving the workbook in a reasonable amount of time.
-
- The problem is that the worksheets in a workbook take up huge
- numbers of Windows systems resources. Each worksheet take about
- 3% of your GDI resources.
-
- So if you run about 75% GDI free normally, and Excel takes up around
- 12% GDI just to start up and Windows does not run well under 15% GDI
- then the practical limit is 16 worksheets. I am now at 20 sheets.
- I have found nowhere in the manual or on-line help that says this is
- the practical limit. I sure wish I had known !!
-
- Unfortunatly the GDI systems resources in Windows is fixed. You can
- not improve it by adding memory or by doing ANYTHING.
-
- The only way to resolve my problem is to combine the worksheets and keep the
- number below 16. This will not be easy.
-
- I think Excel 4 is a good product but this aspect of it is very very
- poorly designed.
-
- Beware !
-
- Alan
-
- --
- Alan Walford Eos Systems Inc., Vancouver,B.C., Canada Tel: 604-734-8655
- aew@eosvcr.wimsey.bc.ca OR ...uunet!wimsey.bc.ca!eosvcr!aew
-