Excel cannot complete the task with available resources. Choose less data or close applications.

Anonymous
2010-05-05T14:25:22+00:00

Excel cannot complete the task with available resources. Choose less data or close applications. the size of the file is 640MB with over 250k records. I have 3.25GB of memory. It takes 5 mintues for the file to open.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2011-09-07T15:07:34+00:00

I have been experiencing this problem for months (i.e., Excel cannot complete the task with available resources. Choose less data or close applications).  I am running Windows 7 and Office 2010.  The problem can occur with very small spreadsheets so it has nothing to do with the complexity of the spreadsheets.  After reading the other posts, especially the one from Chuthor, I began to suspect incompatibilities between Excel and other MS software that I've downloaded.

Anyway, I just uninstalled Windows Live Essentials and Microsoft Outlook Social Connector for Live Messenger, which came with an update from Microsoft on 4/7/2011.  This appears to have solved the problem.

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Anonymous
2012-04-09T18:19:33+00:00

We eventually opened a ticket with Microsoft. Apparently this is on their radar, with no real fix just this work around. The users were experiencing this error daily, and by disabling preview pane in the 3 necessar locations completly fixed the issue. Here is the workaround MS sent me.

Windows 7 is new with Preview/Details panes. These Preview/Details panes contribute to the "Available resources" issues, as well as our "Locked for Editing by another user" issues. We consider turning them off in these 3 locations as a valid test:

Windows:

1. Right click on Start Ribbon.

2. Click Open Windows Explorer.

3. Click Organize | Layout  |

4. Uncheck Details Pane and Preview Pane.

Excel:

1. Click File | Open.

2. Click Organize | Layout  |

3. Uncheck Details Pane and Preview Pane.

Outlook:

1. Open a new e-mail.

2. In the "Include" group, click Attach File.

3. Click Organize | Layout  |

4. Uncheck Details Pane and Preview Pane.

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  1. Anonymous
    2012-09-24T21:40:33+00:00

    Microsoft is notorious for using generic error messages as catch-all messages arising from any number of sources. When developing in VBA, you'll often get an "Error 1004 - Applicaiton Or Object Defined Error". This provides absolutely no informaiton about just what is causing the problem. It just means that "something went wrong". I think the message in the title of this post is one of those generic error messages,  It is essentially Excel passing the blame to Windows. Something went wrong and Excel is absolving itself and blaming Windows.  The cause could indeed be a lack of memory, but it is more likely that something else is going on. I've encountered this error on my one of  my Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit machines with 18GB of memory with Office 2010 64-bit. There is no way Excel is running out of memory with anywhere near 18GB at its disposal.

    A Long integer can hold a number up to about 4 billion. There are not 4 billion lines of code in Excel, so a distinct error number could be assigned to every single line of code. Not practical, but they definitely need to treat error handling more seriously. Exception handling in the NET framework is much better than error handling in VBA, but until NET finds its way into Office in a serious way, we're stuck with these meaningless error messages.

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  2. Anonymous
    2012-09-24T21:16:17+00:00

    I uninstalled Office 32 bit and installed Office 64-bit. No more issues. We are running on Win 7 Enterprise and some Win7 Pro, all 64-bit.

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  3. Anonymous
    2012-09-24T18:43:02+00:00

    I tried un-checking the preview pane and I am still getting the error.

    The file will not even open, unless I restart my PC and I am running a new PC with 8 GB, 64bit, 3.7ghz.

    I don't understand what is going on. I am running Windows 7 Pro and Office 2010 Home/Bus.

    This is very frustrating and time consuming!! I do not have the programs listed by PatHigbie to try that fix either.

    Thank you to anyone that can help.

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