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
    2012-01-05T22:11:20+00:00

    I just did a search and found on another forum (Technet) the following fix - and dare I say it seems to have worked:

    If using Windows 7, delete all files from this folder: C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel

    I noticed a folder with a filename of a file I was working on frequently around the time the nonsense started. Let's hope that was the fix...

    Deleting the excel binary worksheet files (.xlsb) in the ...\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel did work for me, at least so far.

    However, looking in my recycle bin I see that these files seem to be automatically generated and then deleted by Excel over time as resources are required, maybe? Unclear.

    If the problem comes back I'll reply to my post.

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  2. Anonymous
    2012-01-14T00:25:39+00:00

    Okay, the problem came back.   And I no longer see any .xlsb files in the ...\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel directory so I'm back to square one. Sad.

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  3. Anonymous
    2012-01-26T21:18:16+00:00

    I have a user that receives this error only when having multiople excel files open.  She can open any excel file individually but at some point she starts getting the error.  This is a Win7x64 system with 4GB RAM.  In recreating the error in multiple ways we found that double-clicking another excel file, or any other way of automatically opening the file in excel would cause the error.  However, with all the excel files open, we instead would open another excel window, click Open and then browse to the file excel file she was previously double-clicking on.  The file would open without the error.  Has me baffled but it seems like when they are double-clicking the file it is trying to open the file with the same excel instance that is already running, it runs out of resources and gives the error.  If you open excel first and then open the file it seems like it is a new instance and has the resources necessary to open the file without an error.  Definitley not a fix but at least it is a workaround for us until we can find a permanent fix.

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