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

I don't want to bump an old thread, but we are experiencing the same problem. We have one user who uses quite a lot of excel sheets (like 7-8 with no macro's, ...). Only on the pc she is using (Windows 7, Office 2010), we are experiencing the error "Excel cannot complete this task with available resources. Choose less data or close other applications." Followed by "Microsoft Excel cannot open or save any more documents because there is not enough available memory or disk space.".

We have tried all the small tricks we found on the internet about this problem, but we didn't succeed yet. We don't have an Office Live Version (like Chuthor), so that can't be the problem. The person sitting next to her is on vacation this week, so she does the same work, but not successfully without error, on a pc with the same specifications at this moment.

Is there yet a solution for this problem? Or how did you people posted before me eventually handle this problem?

Strangely enough when I ran into this the thing that fixed it was removing Office Live Version 1.3, I'm not sure if you guys have that on your systems or not but it was what fixed mine doing this. Why I don't know, perhaps going to 1.4 would have fixed it too, but I was sick and tired of working on the issue and didn't want to touch it anymore after that.  I hope this helps someone else.

Just a recap, I too was getting the error with opening attachments on a double click from outlook, it gave me the message about corrupt data and trying to recover it.

I just spent an hour with MS Tech Support and got nowhere. The tech insisted it was a network issue and not an excel issue. Most of the excel files I use are saved on a network server.

I replicated the issue on my desktop but was not able to replicate the issue using the server computer therefore he erroneously concluded it was the network. I most strenuously object. This is an excel issue. A big issue.

I am using Windows 7 and Office 10. I was using Office 32 bit but changed to 64 bit when it was suggested it might be the problem. I never had this issue on my old slow as Christmas PC using Windows 98 and Office 2003.

The funny thing is the tech suggested the spreadsheets I use are too big. I beg to differ. While not small if excel can’t perform on a spreadsheet with 15k rows and 30 columns with no big complex formulas then I want to go back to 2003. I now have 3x the computing power on this computer.

I tried to sort by 3 or 4 columns and he said that was too much. How come for the last 5 years I have been able to sort by 3 columns no problem and up until a couple of weeks ago I could sort by 4 or 5 or 6 columns with no problem. Now if you try and sort by multiple columns, delete a column, add a column you get the message:

The operation you are about to perform affects a large number of cells and may take a significant amount of time to complete. Are you sure you want to continue?

Then:

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

After you get the message the spreadsheet is basically unworkable. I haven’t found anything you can do with it., If you try and save it, you cant. If you try and go to the file tab it won’t. You have to X out of it unsaved and reopen. Sometimes when you reopen it will work again for a while, then the same thing starts happening.

Anyone have any real solutions? I have already cleaned up my temporary files, raised the amount of virtual memory, deleted files in the XLStart folder etc…all the kneejerk I don’t really know whats going on solutions. Any real solutions out there??