We work on a product that uses Excel, we are now testing all aspects of Excel 2013. During these tests, we seem to have encountered a problem where excel suddenly causes high CPU usage by only drawing some shapes. We have been able to minimize the problem into the following few steps: Open a new, clean workbook Draw an oval, give it a material (right-click, choose “Format Shape”, click “Effects”, “3D Format”, “Material”. Choose any material.) Duplicate the Shape four times, producing Oval2, 3, 4 and 5. Group Oval2 and 3. Group Oval 4 and 5. Press Alt-F10, in the selection window, hide the group containing Oval2 and 3. Deselect everything (!) by clicking in an empty cell. Now observe the task manager. On an I7 Windows 7 PC, Excel now runs 4 cores at around 50%. Also, OnTime functions are not being called anymore because of this rendering bug. Once you select any shape, or un-hide the hidden group, Excel becomes quiet once again. Also, the problem can be prevented from happening by removing the materials in the shapes. This bug (?) seems to happen also on most of our more complicated applications, and it would take lots of work to re-design everything not to use materials. Can anyone confirm this problem, provide a workaround?

Hi, You may try disabling the hardware acceleration and then check if you are able to re-produce the issue. Open Excel > Click on File > Options > Advanced > Display > Enable the option ‘ Disable hardware graphic acceleration’ . Let us know the results to assist you better. Thank you.

Dear All, Does anyone have suggestions to solve this? We believe it is a genuine bug in Excel that is easily repeatable, as described above. Can someone confirm if this is repeatable on other computers/excel version etc.? Any suggestions for workarounds? Please let us know, as we are currently stuck in the development of one of our important applications...

See my post just above this: I believe it's an Excel 2013 (or general Office 2013 Graphics engine? ) problem. Setting for Hardware Graphics acceleration does not affect it. It does not happen instantly when I hide the one grouped pair of ovals, but the instant I move the other pair, CPU goes to about 30% usage and stays there until I unhide the other pair and select a cell on the sheet. Hide the pair again and all seems ok, but move the visible pair and you're back up to Excel hogging 30% of a Quad Core processor.

I am having CPU spikes and lock ups for simple tasks such as copy and paste and format painter. Takes at least 10-20 seconds to catch up when hitting ctrl C. Causing some serious productivity issues.

Hi, This issue might be related with the display drivers/adapter as the CPU usage increases when adding effects to the shapes. You may try following the steps suggested in the following KB article and check if it helps: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2768648/en-us Reply with the results to assist you better. Thank you.

Excel 2013 High CPU Usage

Anonymous

We work on a product that uses Excel, we are now testing all aspects of Excel 2013. During these tests, we seem to have encountered a problem where excel suddenly causes high CPU usage by only drawing some shapes. We have been able to minimize the problem into the following few steps:

Open a new, clean workbook
Draw an oval, give it a material (right-click, choose “Format Shape”, click “Effects”, “3D Format”, “Material”. Choose any material.)
Duplicate the Shape four times, producing Oval2, 3, 4 and 5.
Group Oval2 and 3. Group Oval 4 and 5.
Press Alt-F10, in the selection window, hide the group containing Oval2 and 3.
Deselect everything (!) by clicking in an empty cell.

Now observe the task manager. On an I7 Windows 7 PC, Excel now runs 4 cores at around 50%. Also, OnTime functions are not being called anymore because of this rendering bug. Once you select any shape, or un-hide the hidden group, Excel becomes quiet once again. Also, the problem can be prevented from happening by removing the materials in the shapes.

This bug (?) seems to happen also on most of our more complicated applications, and it would take lots of work to re-design everything not to use materials. Can anyone confirm this problem, provide a workaround?

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous

2013-10-24T04:36:07+00:00

Hi,

You may try disabling the hardware acceleration and then check if you are able to re-produce the issue.

Open Excel > Click on File > Options > Advanced > Display > Enable the option ‘Disable hardware graphic acceleration’.

Let us know the results to assist you better.

Thank you.
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Anonymous

2013-11-08T12:50:40+00:00
Dear All,

Does anyone have suggestions to solve this? We believe it is a genuine bug in Excel that is easily repeatable, as described above.
- Can someone confirm if this is repeatable on other computers/excel version etc.?
- Any suggestions for workarounds?
Please let us know, as we are currently stuck in the development of one of our important applications...
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8 people found this answer helpful.

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Anonymous

2014-01-09T00:54:56+00:00

See my post just above this: I believe it's an Excel 2013 (or general Office 2013 Graphics engine? ) problem. Setting for Hardware Graphics acceleration does not affect it. It does not happen instantly when I hide the one grouped pair of ovals, but the instant I move the other pair, CPU goes to about 30% usage and stays there until I unhide the other pair and select a cell on the sheet. Hide the pair again and all seems ok, but move the visible pair and you're back up to Excel hogging 30% of a Quad Core processor.
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Anonymous

2014-01-08T20:31:38+00:00

I am having CPU spikes and lock ups for simple tasks such as copy and paste and format painter. Takes at least 10-20 seconds to catch up when hitting ctrl C. Causing some serious productivity issues.
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Anonymous

2013-10-22T07:21:13+00:00

Hi,

This issue might be related with the display drivers/adapter as the CPU usage increases when adding effects to the shapes.

You may try following the steps suggested in the following KB article and check if it helps:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2768648/en-us

Reply with the results to assist you better.

Thank you.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments