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?

We have been working with rather large Excel files for years using all the most recent versions of Excel as they have been released over the years, and NEVER run into the problem we are now with 32 bit Excel 2013. Various machines with various processors, graphics cards, etc, are all experiencing similar problems of sudden and unexplainable 100% usage of RAM, according to the task manager. Excel becomes completely unresponsive. There are 8 of us working domain workstations, most all on 64bit Windows 7 Pro, but I just fired up a new machine and using Windows 10 Pro. Everyone has a least 6 GB of RAM. Everyone is now using Excel 2013, with the exception of one workstation. Some have not experienced the lock up problem, but most of us have. The workstation that has not been upgraded to Excel 2013 has NOT had an issue. We all use McAfee for security. The Server is Windows Server Essentials 2012 which has performed flawlessly for us. It does not seem to figure into this problem. The variety of our configurations leaves me with little doubt that the problem is created by Excel 2013. Will the Microsoft team PLEASE, SERIOUSLY address this issue. My confidence in MS products is gone. I spent well over $1000 on this new version, and spent countless hours now trying to resolve the problem, and lost countless hours of work as well, since the error also prevents Autosave of happening. Unless this issue is addressed soon, I will have no choice but to all Office 2013 products and revert back to Office 2010, which was an stable as anyone could ever hope for. I find it very hard to believe that we few on this thread are the only ones experiencing this problem. Thanks to all in this thread for being so persistent and consistent with your descriptions of the problems Dare I say that expect Microsoft will NOT admit there is a problem and NEVER offer up a fix.

I also have this issue with Excel 2013. CPU usage goes to 100% after opening 3 or more Excel files. The system has plenty of free memory. System has an Intel Core2Duo CPU. Upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10 didn't solve the issue.

Despite all troubleshooting based on this thread and others I am still living with this annoying issue in Excel 2013. I can't find anything useful from MS on this issue and it is beginning to have a major productivity impact. Come on Microsoft please help us / advise us this is in hand for a fix.

oh well, thought I had it narrowed down... I wonder why there's no serious response from Microsoft on this?

The file that I described above is an Excel 2013 workbook (.xlsx) and was created from scratch from the version of Excel I originally reported.

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

2015-12-04T00:03:43+00:00

We have been working with rather large Excel files for years using all the most recent versions of Excel as they have been released over the years, and NEVER run into the problem we are now with 32 bit Excel 2013. Various machines with various processors, graphics cards, etc, are all experiencing similar problems of sudden and unexplainable 100% usage of RAM, according to the task manager. Excel becomes completely unresponsive. There are 8 of us working domain workstations, most all on 64bit Windows 7 Pro, but I just fired up a new machine and using Windows 10 Pro. Everyone has a least 6 GB of RAM. Everyone is now using Excel 2013, with the exception of one workstation. Some have not experienced the lock up problem, but most of us have. The workstation that has not been upgraded to Excel 2013 has NOT had an issue. We all use McAfee for security. The Server is Windows Server Essentials 2012 which has performed flawlessly for us. It does not seem to figure into this problem.

The variety of our configurations leaves me with little doubt that the problem is created by Excel 2013.

Will the Microsoft team PLEASE, SERIOUSLY address this issue. My confidence in MS products is gone. I spent well over $1000 on this new version, and spent countless hours now trying to resolve the problem, and lost countless hours of work as well, since the error also prevents Autosave of happening. Unless this issue is addressed soon, I will have no choice but to all Office 2013 products and revert back to Office 2010, which was an stable as anyone could ever hope for.

I find it very hard to believe that we few on this thread are the only ones experiencing this problem. Thanks to all in this thread for being so persistent and consistent with your descriptions of the problems Dare I say that expect Microsoft will NOT admit there is a problem and NEVER offer up a fix.
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Anonymous

2015-11-23T20:49:05+00:00

I also have this issue with Excel 2013. CPU usage goes to 100% after opening 3 or more Excel files. The system has plenty of free memory. System has an Intel Core2Duo CPU. Upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10 didn't solve the issue.
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Anonymous

2015-10-30T10:32:42+00:00

Despite all troubleshooting based on this thread and others I am still living with this annoying issue in Excel 2013.

I can't find anything useful from MS on this issue and it is beginning to have a major productivity impact.

Come on Microsoft please help us / advise us this is in hand for a fix.
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Anonymous

2015-10-15T12:19:00+00:00

oh well, thought I had it narrowed down...

I wonder why there's no serious response from Microsoft on this?
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Anonymous

2015-10-14T17:07:48+00:00

The file that I described above is an Excel 2013 workbook (.xlsx) and was created from scratch from the version of Excel I originally reported.
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