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, 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

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