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
    2012-03-28T18:34:43+00:00

    Problem Fixed, (for me anyway...)

    http://www.officearticles.com/excel/troubleshooting_microsoft_excel.htm

    Delete the Excel.XLB on the users profile.  Tried everything here, but no good.  Found above webpage, searched for and found the excel.xlb file, and the out of resources error went away.  Also fixed the slow speed problem. 

    Not what I expected.  Even after doing this for over 15 years, I am still amazed at fixes to problems that seem to be completely unrelated to the problem.  The Excel.xlb file (search on *.XLB , and delete all files found) is supposed to just contain the users basic template stuff that gets passed to excel when you open the program.  The file is recreated when you open excel the first time.

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  2. Anonymous
    2012-03-24T17:21:38+00:00

    Well I dunno if will work for anyone else but I've found that If I simply double click the file with Excel closed the file opens. Once opened I can close and open it and a another similarly constructed file.Once opened excel will open it all day. This is over a network - small and lightly used network - off a Linux file server if that matters.

    I'll keep watching for a real answer

    FB

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  3. Anonymous
    2012-03-14T15:08:24+00:00

    We have 2 users having this same resource error. We've tried clearing the XLB files and the temp files in their user profile directory without resolution. Here are more details:

    1. It happens to random Excel documents, some are very large, some are very small and had just basic formulas.
    2. It happens with files stored on a network server, and when opening Excel attachments in Outlook.
    3. The 2 users are using 64bit Windows 7 with Office Professional 2010 32bit, all fully up to date.
    4. One of the users reported receiving the error opening one file, they closed it down, continued working on other tasks (working in other spreadsheets), then opened the spreadsheet that gave her the error earlier and it opened just fine.

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