Excel 2010 64-bit versus 2007 32-bit

[Ilena]

Hi,
I'm having to upgrade my laptop as it really struggled earlier this week with 48 workbooks at the start of the Miami Open. Been putting it off for a while really, but have sourced a desktop replacement that will be more than adequate with 64 bit OS.

Bit of a software question as I'm only going to use this for trading, but I'm thinking of overlooking the pre-installed Office 2010 and going for standalone Excel 2010 which is also 64 bit compatible. I've been reading some contrasting opinions though in my research about the efficiency of 2010 and was wondering if anyone has any opinions or experiences as to this latest version, as I can always load my existing 2007 license which is 32 bit compatible.


Many Thanks and Kind Regards,

Ilena

[osknows]

Hi Ilena,

I think like most things it depends on what you intend to do that determines whether things are more efficient.

I'm fairly certain that Excel 2003 is still quicker running VBA than both 2007 & 2010. However, I'm not sure you'll see a massive improvement between Excel 2007 and Excel 2010 64 bit for trading as the spreadsheets & ranges used tend to be quite small.

For me, Excel 2010 64bit is much quicker when using large files with circa 1M rows. I have several very large databases and wouldn't use anything other than 2010 64bit anymore. 2010 64bit also 'feels' faster but I couldn't quantify this.

[Ilena]

Thanks Osknows. It's funny. I'm still on 2000 at work as that's what the original macros I use there were written on. It works fine and tends to be less troublesome than later versions. Also the navigation is so much easier and quicker up to 2003 as I guess that's what I'm used to.
I certainly won't be going near anything as large as you're using, but just wanted to be sure I'm getting the best from the investment. At the moment I'm thinking I'll probably go with a standalone Excel 2010, as I just don't need the other stuff in the Office suite. Saying that though, I'm surprised that looking on Amazon you can still get 2003. Mmm. Decisions.

Many Thanks again.

Regards,

Ilena

[greenfingers]

Hey osknows, I was wondering if you're running Windows 7 as I couldn't open a betfair P&L on someone else's PC running Windows 7 and Excel 2010.

The error message was, "Excel found unreadable content in "BettingPandL.xls". Do you want to recover the contents of this workbook? If you trust the source of this workbook, click Yes."

I'm wondering if it's Excel, the OS or some other factor such as anti-virus software. Any ideas? Betfair have come up blank.

[osknows]

It's a common problem for 3rd party apps that create excel files that won't open on 64bit machines. See here http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums ... e03ee01aaf

The only workaround currently is to open on a 32bit machine or install open office and convert.

It does work on Windows 7 32bit as I've tried it successfully

[greenfingers]

Cool, thanks a lot osknows, good to know the reason.

[mak]

another workaround which i use is to open the particular data with open office...it works fine

[greenfingers]

Thanks mak. Presumably once the file has been saved by Open Office then it would also be openable by Excel 2010?

[mak]

yes it works ok afterwards

[greenfingers]

Supa dupa, thanks again.

Sorry for hijacking your thread Ilena, you may find this site useful for learning about efficient use of Excel (although not VBA):

http://www.decisionmodels.com/calcsecrets.htm

I bought the FastExcel plug-in and it really helped me understand which areas were causing the slow-downs. In the end I re-wrote the whole spreadsheet in VBA though and that was even faster - after I got a lot of good tips on this forum!

[Ilena]

No problem Greenfingers and thanks for the link. I was about to order the new laptop, but will need to read through this and the link Osknows posted first.


Many Thanks,

Ilena