Excel 2013 High CPU Usage

Anonymous
2013-10-21T13:21:14+00:00

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?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-12-06T05:27:44+00:00

    I agree with you on this one. I'm sick and tired of reading the same answers from this thread. It seems that the answers were just being para-phrased so that it may look different but actually, it's just the same.

    No concrete answer being provided on this high CPU usage for MS office 2013. Once you open 3 and more excel, it will start to eat up the CPU.

    Another one that causes a sudden high CPU usage was when you try to open an Excel file created from older versions such as 2007 and 2010.

    It's been going on for almost a year already since I started using 2013 and I'm thinking of reverting back already to 2010.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-12-11T19:32:41+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.

    Thanks for the suggestion,  I disabled H.W.A, and closed Excel, then re-opened it again and the CPU usage was normal,, I then re-enabled H.W.A, then closed and opened Excel and all was still ok.  Strange, but thanks

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-02-14T15:45:53+00:00

    I also have this issue with Excel 2013.  CPU usage goes to 60% even though the files are not many, and not complicated (RAM is free )

    You can see two photos I attach to this situation

    I also follow the lead of the graphics but not optimistic (about Disable hardware graphic acceleration)

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-02-15T09:09:23+00:00

    Go to options > Advanced > Scroll Down to display settings > check the disable hardware graphics acceleration box

    source: http://superuser.com/questions/489695/excessive-cpu-fan-noise-due-to-ms-office-2013

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  5. Anonymous
    2016-02-15T12:19:47+00:00

    lidihertu, a lot of the people on this thread have tried that one with no success... (

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