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.

Hello, and thanks for your reply. I have updated my computer, which has a NVIDIA Quadro NVS295, with the latest drivers. This changed the driver version from 311.06 to 320.92 but it did not solve the problem. Also, I have tried the same steps on two computers in our company, and on my Virtualbox VM, all with similar results: Excel starts using high CPU. I have run the "Microsoft Office Configuration Analyzer Tool 1.1" as mentioned in the KB article. This scanned my Excel installation and found no problems. Actually I am quite convinced that the steps I mention reproduce this problem accurately. Can you verify if this is the case?

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.

We have tried this setting on two computers. It does not resolve the problem, it is still repeatable in the way described above, and in our applications. Any other suggestions?

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...

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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86 answers

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?

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Anonymous

2013-10-22T09:27:18+00:00

Hello, and thanks for your reply.

I have updated my computer, which has a NVIDIA Quadro NVS295, with the latest drivers. This changed the driver version from 311.06 to 320.92 but it did not solve the problem. Also, I have tried the same steps on two computers in our company, and on my Virtualbox VM, all with similar results: Excel starts using high CPU.

I have run the "Microsoft Office Configuration Analyzer Tool 1.1" as mentioned in the KB article. This scanned my Excel installation and found no problems.

Actually I am quite convinced that the steps I mention reproduce this problem accurately. Can you verify if this is the case?
Was this answer helpful?

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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.
Was this answer helpful?

100+ people found this answer helpful.

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Anonymous

2013-10-24T07:18:21+00:00

We have tried this setting on two computers. It does not resolve the problem, it is still repeatable in the way described above, and in our applications.

Any other suggestions?
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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...
Was this answer helpful?

8 people found this answer helpful.

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