Why is Excel 2016 for Mac so bad?

Hi

The machine I use for answering the forums is my pre-retina, pre-SSD MacBook. It does have a graphics card that takes some of the load off the CPU.

Since the recent advent of mutli-threaded calculation and the updating of the Office Object Model so that it is the same as the Windows version, my impression of speed for calculations is that it is pretty much a tie. I haven't done any speed tests, but I suspect if you had boot camp and a workbook designed to test calculation speeds, they would be pretty close.

In terms of databases, please keep in mind that worksheets do cell formulas. Databases do not. It is not reasonable to expect a Excel that does a bazillion more things in cells than database programs to be as fast with just data.

That said, in Excel 2016 for Windows, there is a different way to have tables called the Data Model. The Data Model does not do calculations and works as fast as any dedicated database program. Microsoft is in the process of hooking up the data model in Excel for Mac. In 16.14 you will no longer get a warning that content will be lost if there is a data model in a workbook. Some data model features are visible now, but they are not working. For example, a PivotTable based on a Data Model will display, as will its slicers, but the interactivity and calculation is not working, yet. It is obvious Microsoft has done a ton of work on this, and it continues.

Does your machine Jim, by the way,  have an SSD? If so that may be one reason you don't have some issues at least with speed. My new Machine has 16 GB RAm plus a One terabyte SSD. Previously my old Machine had a Standard Hard Drive. On it, you could go up fill the coffee pot with water. Let it make coffee and drink a cup before any Office apps would open. Today the same applications will open and get up to speed before you can blink your eyes twice. 

However, When calculating spreadsheet, it still takes a long time, unless you go into Preferences Calculation and turn on Multithreading. Then and only then does Caluculations run reasonably fast.

It's a known fact since there has been a PC Version, Calculations have always been much faster on PC, and I've used Excel since Excel 5.01a days and Word since 6.01a Days (Circa 1995). I've fathfully used both through every update until now. despite all Mac users have gone through and the treatment we have received from Microsoft, I've continued using Office products. There is no "real" competition at least for Excel and Word. The competition was run off years ago by Microsoft. Now we must accept what is given. The one thing Excel does get some Competition from is in relational databases. And FileMaker smokes Excel so bad on that; Excel will never catch up. The last best competition for Word was WordPerfect and after Corel Bought it and promised continued support. A Certain big company came along and put the fear into them, and they announced the shut down of Mac support before the ink got dry on the WordPerfect Corp and Corel contract. 

I know the phrase I love conspiracy theories will be thrown into the Mix but at the time both MacWorld and MacUser which I subscribed to at the time, wrote about the situation.

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As i said, Excel is working fine for almost all users. If you can provide an example workbook that exhibits the problem, I'd be happy to try to troubleshoot it with you.

I see tooltips and formula help as expected, always. Even my own user defined worksheet functions work.

I hear your complaints and I am sure what you say is happening, but you've given me nothing to work with to try to help you troubleshoot. My hunch is something is awry within the workbook, which is why I would like to take a crack at it.

I'm sorry but you are completely wrong on the tasks that work or not in Excel 2016. Wrong since I've had to give up any further due to neglected and no solution (after 10's of emails and calls to customer support) over autofill task just not working at all on Excel. As per this same day it is still not working and Microsoft has made me also re-intall and the package several times, used older versions and made me re-install my OS 2 times. Still no way to make it work on whatsoever case. Once I tab the letter of a word I need to write on each cell, it comes prefixed that Excel should suggest (appears) to autofill the same word and or number. This JUST DOES NOT HAPPEN. Lets not even mention the customer service.......what a disaster!! ps You may want to scroll in the forum here where not only this same Discussion but many many more lamenting a lot of problems on Excel and Word. You work for Microsoft?

Hi mijochda ,

You bring up several different issues. Maybe we can work through them.

May I assume you are using Excel with the latest update, which is 16.3.1? Version 16.14 is currently available in Insider Slow and will go out to everyone in the next week or two.

What is Office Insider? - Office Support

You can find the version information by going to the Excel menu and choosing About Excel. If your experience is with any other version, I recommend that you go to the Help menu and choose Check for Updates to launch AutoUpdate and let it install updates. Then restart your Mac and try the problem workbook again.

I have noticed an occasional post here in the forums from people who find Word or Excel to be excruciatingly slow for no obvious reason. Excel 2016 for Mac runs just fine for me and I have not been able to replicate these issues on any of my Macs. I use a workbook having more than 10,000 dependent cell formulas and its operation is instantaneous. I use data sets of more than 500,000 rows and more than 100 columns where calculation is very fast - every bit as fast as Excel for Windows (we now have multiple core calculations). These workbooks have multiple PivotTables and charts. If you are willing to share the problem workbook, please remove personal or confidential information first, then put it onto a share site such as DropBox or OneDrive and provide the download link so everyone interested can try it on their Mac to see how it behaves.

While you were reconstructing your workbook, did you notice what formula or something you did in the workbook led to the slowdown? I assume it worked fast up to a certain point, then something changed. You said there is complexity that you think is slowing it down. Is there something specific you have in mind?

You mentioned Views. Excel 2011 has two views: Normal and Page Layout. There is no "Single Page" view. Excel 2016 has the same two views plus a old one that was reincarnated from 2008 and earlier, Page Break Preview. I'll need your help to understand what you mean by Single Page view.

Old builds of Excel 2016 had major scrolling problems in Page Layout view. To the best of my knowledge, the scrolling problem has been fixed. I don't see complaints about it any more (except for yours).

I do not claim these problems don't exist for you. I will claim that the root cause of the problems you are having can be identified and perhaps corrected. When there is a large factor of uniqueness, it is sometimes difficult to suggest the right thing that fixes the trouble right off the bat. Unfortunately, this involves using a process of elimination that has many possible branches.

Operations that can affect speed that come to mind are: workbook corruption, workbook content, font problems, lack of updates, file system corruption, faulty install of Office or Mac OS.

You have taken a good approach toward your troubleshooting. Testing in Excel 2011 where there's no speed issue points a finger at something going wrong in Excel 2016 on your Mac. If you can find another Mac having the same update 16.13.1 of XL 2016 and open the workbook on the other Mac, is it still slow?

If it works fast on another Mac, then we can focus on the install of Office, Mac OS and your fonts. If the same slowness appears, it could be a problem with the workbook. Then we can focus on finding what it is about the workbook that is causing the slowdown.

Another troubleshooting step to take is to boot to Safe Mode by restarting your Mac while holding the SHIFT key down. Your Mac will take a long time to start up, as Disk Utility runs in the background and fixes your file system, if necessary. The font cache is emptied, too. Then try the workbook while in Safe Mode. Is it any better or just the same?

More radical troubleshooting can involve making a new Mac OS User account and testing there, uninstall/reinstall of Office, reinstall system fonts, look crosswise at your font management tool (some of them have weird interactions with other apps for some reason), reinstall MacOS. I admit that there are a couple of users who have tried everything, and for some reason there is still extreme slowness on their Macs. In these rare cases you an join Insider Fast and interact directly with the developer teams at Microsoft to try to solve mysterious issues.

Recently, the object model of Excel 2016 for Mac was upgraded to the same object model as Excel 2016 for Windows. The cross-platform experience is not 100% yet, but with each update, Microsoft is bringing the Mac version closer and closer to the Windows feature set. I haven't tested, but I think using Control-e now works to use Flash Fill in the 16.13.1 update. If it does, this is a major cross-platform milestone. If you open a workbook having a Data Model in 16.13.1 you won't get a dialog warning you that your workbook has an unsupported feature. The Data Model doesn't work, but now Excel for Mac lets you at least open the workbook without removing the data model. Some data model features are in the interface, but they are turned off. It is obvious this enormous feature is being worked on and will go live, eventually.

The 32-bit program support issue and its resulting problems with old software is strictly Apple's idea. Mac OS 10.14 may or may not support 32-bit applications. My hunch is that Apple is playing a "wait-and-see" game to see how strongly Mac users push back against the idea of losing 32-bit applications. As with Rosetta, there isn't a technical reason why 32-bit apps can't run. It's a marketing decision.