Low Memory Message in Excel

Digitaluser

Digitaluser

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The excel speadsheet saves but a window tells me low memory. I have checked all the obvious things - hard drive (Free 60GB ) - ram (2GB) -deleted temp files - deleted recycle bin - but still low memory. I even deleted all unused .xls files leaving just four very small .xls files - but still low memory. :confused:
 
If Virtual Memory then:

Windows XP
Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
In the System Properties dialog box, click the Advanced tab.
In the Performance pane, click Settings.
In the Performance Options dialog box, click the Advanced tab.
In the Virtual memory pane, click Change.
Change the Initial size value and the Maximum size value to a higher value, click Set, and then click OK.
Click OK to close the Performance Options dialog box, and then click OK to close the System Properties dialog box.
 
the message is when i have worked on a spreadsheet and hit save.
Have looked at virtual memory but
I have no values in these boxes so do not know what initial and maximum values to put in ?
 
Digitaluser said:
The excel speadsheet saves but a window tells me low memory. I have checked all the obvious things - hard drive (Free 60GB ) - ram (2GB) -deleted temp files - deleted recycle bin - but still low memory. I even deleted all unused .xls files leaving just four very small .xls files - but still low memory. :confused:
Click to expand...

Keep in mind you got two types of memory with computers.

You have real (physical) RAM, such as the 2Gb you've mentioned. This you can expand by buying extra DIMM's and inserting these on the motherboard to increase the total amount of RAM. The more RAM you've got, the better, as programs will be quicker to respond, and you can have more programs open at any time before the system will slow down.

Then you've got virtual memory, so called because it isn't there. It's actually a swap file where Windows swap unused program modules out, and swaps it back into the physical RAM whenever needed. This virtual memory (or pagefile) resides on your hard disk, and is slower than your physical memory.

This is why your performance will nosedive and your hard drive will be extra busy when you got lots of programs with huge datafiles open.
 
Digitaluser said:
the message is when i have worked on a spreadsheet and hit save.
Have looked at virtual memory but
I have no values in these boxes so do not know what initial and maximum values to put in ?
Click to expand...

Make sure that "Custom size" is selected.

Put 2048 in initial (2Gb initial) and 4096 (4Gb maximum).

As a rule of thumb you can have virtual memory twice the size of your physical memory.
 
The_Librarian said:
Make sure that "Custom size" is selected.

Put 2048 in initial (2Gb initial) and 4096 (4Gb maximum).

As a rule of thumb you can have virtual memory twice the size of your physical memory.
Click to expand...

Did a reboot after the above but still low memory message
 
Digitaluser said:
Did a reboot after the above but still low memory message
Click to expand...
If you have any version other than Excel 2010 64-bit you will get this message when the size of the data & formulas in an Excel workbook exceed 2GB in memory - it doesn't matter how much memory (physical \ virtual) you have. It's a 32-bit application limit in non-server versions of MS Windows.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for all your inputs - I have learnt a lot about my pc - in the end my needs are small so as I have just moved from excel to google docs. Cheers
 
Digitaluser said:
Thanks for all your inputs - I have learnt a lot about my pc - in the end my needs are small so as I have just moved from excel to google docs. Cheers
Click to expand...

There are other options if you want to try:

LibreOffice Calc
Gnumeric
EditGrid
 
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