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
    2012-10-20T14:26:09+00:00

    POSSIBLE Solution if using VB or MACROs.

    I had this problem while running a Macro or VB code that called a SORT on some data.

    Even though the dataset was small, only a few hundred lines, it would trigger this error.

    In reviewing the code, I realized the Macro or VB command being used was "cells.select", which essentially selects the entire page, regardless of where the data ends.  With the 32 bit version, you run out of memory doing that.  It would have worked on excel 2003 since the pages were so much smaller.

    By using updated code to determine the range of the data only, and then sorting only that range, the error went away.

    updated code I used is something like what is shown below.

    code

        Dim LastRow As Long  

        Dim LastCol As Long    

        Dim LastCell As String

        Range("A1").Select

        LastRow = ActiveSheet.UsedRange.Rows.Count

        LastCol = ActiveSheet.UsedRange.Columns.Count

        LastCell = Selection.offset(LastRow - 1, LastCol - 1).Address

        Range("A1", LastCell).Select

    Hope that helps someone.

    G

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  2. Anonymous
    2012-10-04T21:27:13+00:00

    Outstanding!

    This has been the only suggestion that has actually worked for me!

    I have a new Thinkpad, 64 bit running Windows 7, Office 2010, and with 8GB RAM. I have been creating the same monthly report for two years without issues, but then I started getting these "cannot complete task..." messages.

    After saving to .xls and then re-saving back to .xlsx, I am now able to sort my spreadsheet. BTW, it is usually about 30,000 rows and 15 columns.

    Well doneSharBaitNZ !!!

     

    I work on a tech support desk and was confounded by this issue. I tried every. Single. Solution. in here before finding this answer and it worked! Thanks all!

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  3. 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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