Excel 2013 High CPU Usage

Sean and others hello - I've had this problem occurring in different situations - I think all of them have been in connection with working on Excel files saved in earlier versions of Excel or generated by other programs (eg. SPSS or online survey programs).

can anyone corroborate this?

I'm experiencing the same issue as originally reported and that matis77 brings us back to.  I have an Excel workbook with two worksheets each with a 5 column by 30 row table.  Data from each table is plotted on a chart on separate sheets.  Each chart has 4 text boxes added.  When I select the sheets with the charts CPU consumption by Excel slowly rises to 100%.  When I select the sheets with the data CPU consumption by Excel goes to near zero.

  Disabling hardware acceleration and clearing the checkbox for Automatically Flash Fill did not resolve the issue for me.

  I'm using:

• Excel 2013 (15.0.4753.1003) MSO (15.0.4753.1003) 64 bit
• Windows 10 Home 64 bit (10.0.10240 Build 10240) with 4 GB RAM
• Parallels Desktop 11 for Mac Pro Edition ver 11.0.2 (31348)
• Macbook Pro with Intel Core i7-4960 with 16 GB RAM
• OS X El Capitan ver 10.11

If I delete the text boxes, save the workbook, close and reopen Excel, I can then select the charts without the CPU consumption problem.  The problem doesn't go away until I close and reopen Excel (closing and open workbook doesn't resolve).

  Going back to the original workbook (with the 4 text box objects on each chart), if I open the workbook in Excel as a partial window, say 1/4 of the full screen, I can select the charts without CPU consumption.  If I make the workbook 1/2 the screen (throw the Excel Application to the left) it starts consuming CPU.  If I make it 1/4 screen again, no CPU consumption.  If I make Excel full screen and select a chart with objects I get 100% CPU consumption.  Return to 1/4 screen and I no CPU consumption when a chart with objects is select.

  That's wiggidy wacked!

I open and close Excel regularly on Win 7 Pro (64-bit) with Office Pro Plus  2010 (32-bit).

Mobile Intel Core i5 2467M (Sandy Bridge)

Now, as I understand it, Excel doesn't actually fully close out and go away when you exit (no idea why).

But when I leave the computer idle (go to lunch) I sometimes find the processor maxed out and cores getting hot with Excel as the high-cpu task (doing nothing? Why doesn't it just close when I close my files?)

Aside: I know there are periodic automatic license checks, and occasionally I have to restart an office appliation (like OneNote especially) because the license doesn't validate fast enough or something.

Disabling the hardware acceleration may be a work around for the CPU problem. It's not cranking up now, but I will re-post if the problem returns.  Otherwise, assume the work-around has been good for me. But I will have to run for a while to make a final judgement. By the way, opening Excel to set the option and then closing it, still leaves Excel running in the background with zero CPU used, but 13 threads hanging around.  WTH are those 13 threads doing there?

Hello Raju,

Thank you for your response.

I'm not shure if we still talking about the same issue as some users were descriping some other problems linked to Copy&Paste. The problem I have faced with Excel 2013 was linked with CPU-Usage is going up to 100% when a graphic is hidden.

The steps to re-enact the problem is descriped in the very first entry from iljafiers as following:

'- 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.'

I also tried to disable hardware acceleration without improving results.

Thank you.

We've been experiencing an issue with Excel 2013 (32-bit version) on a specific spreadsheet where entering data into a cell would hang the application for ~15 seconds. This workaround worked for us:

1. Click on File --> Options --> Advanced.
2. In the Editing Options section, clear the checkbox for Automatically Flash Fill.

Source: http://blogs.technet.com/b/the\_microsoft\_excel\_support\_team\_blog/archive/2013/05/07/excel-crashes-when-you-enter-data-in-a-cell.aspx

This fixed the issue for me. My issue was tabbing and entering data. When I would put in a date it would freeze for 10-15 seconds increasing CPU Usage to 30%. Try this if you are having issues.