Excel sheet with 2000 columns. Possible?

[yuriyking]

Hi all,
I want to import into Excel a table with 2000 columns and 3000 rows and then to process it in Excel.
Is it possible at all to have an Excel sheet with 2000 columns.
Thanks.

 

[bluedragon2]

no, just 256 columns per sheet

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[xlbo]

nope - not a chance I'm afraid. Just to confirm Blue's answer - 256 columns is the absolute maximum in excel

Rgds, Geoff
[blue]Si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni in rebus Latinus alacribus et fructuosis potiri potes![/blue]
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[yuriyking]

Thanks, folk.
It really disappoint me. :-(

 

[xlbo]

You gotta remember that MS will cater for most standard data layouts
A 2000 * 3000 grid is very non standard and IMHO, pretty damn unusual

Rgds, Geoff
[blue]Si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni in rebus Latinus alacribus et fructuosis potiri potes![/blue]
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[KenWright]

Quattro Pro though can handle up to 18,000 columns by 1,000,000 rows apparently.

Regards
Ken.................

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[xlbo]

Bet it still runs like a dog with > 30000 rows though ;-)

Rgds, Geoff
[blue]Si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni in rebus Latinus alacribus et fructuosis potiri potes![/blue]
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[KenWright]

I wouldn't bet against it either

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[xlbo]

That's the thing - the ONLY possible use for having > 65536 rows in excel would be so you could import some data and then export it again - if you actually need to work on > 65536 rows of data then excel - or any spreadsheet application for that matter - is not the right tool. IMHO > apprx 30000 rows is a database job MSAccess or similar

Rgds, Geoff
[blue]Si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni in rebus Latinus alacribus et fructuosis potiri potes![/blue]
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[KenWright]

Could do with more columns though - perhaps a square spreadsheet We do a lot of estimates at work where people estimate their labour across a timeframe, and it just seems more natural to have that timeframe go horizontally across the page as opposed to vertically down it.

Regards
Ken...............

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission

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[xlbo]

that would be interesting but I think it'd be easier to add more rows than columns - can't remember why exactly - I read it somewhere - maybe on the decsisionmodels.com website - something to do with how excel calculates - you are generally better off doing formulae down rather than across....

Rgds, Geoff
[blue]Si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni in rebus Latinus alacribus et fructuosis potiri potes![/blue]
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[bluedragon2]

From a web page:

Every Excel worksheet is limited to 256 columns. Despite what must amount to thousands of requests over the years, Microsoft refuses to increase the number of columns in a worksheet. Beginners often discover this limitation when they want to set up a spreadsheet that contains data for each day in a year. If they store the data horizontally, they run out of column in mid-September.

So we're stuck with 256. Why such a weird number? Why not 250? Or 365? The number of rows and columns is a by-product of the binary number system. 256 is 2, raised to the eight power (2^8), which is the maximum value that can be stored using eight bits. The number of rows in a worksheet is 65,536, which is 2^16. Older versions of excel contained only 16,384 rows, which is 2^14 power.

The reason for the 256-column limitation is probably due to the fact that Excel is so old, and it contains lots of code that would be "broken" if the number of columns were increased.

Following are a few related facts:

* Corel's Quattro Pro spreadsheet supports 18,278 columns and up to 1,000,000 rows.
* The spreadsheet in Microsoft's Office Web Components supports 18,278 columns and 262,144 rows

http://www.j-walk.com/ss/excel/odd/odd13.htm

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[yuriyking]

And how much looks Quattro Pro like Excel?
I mean if non-advanced Excel user could easily use Quattro Pro?

 

[mscallisto]

I'd bet that MS use a half byte (hex FF) (dec 255) for a counter in the original excel and just never changed it so we're stuck with 256 rows.

 

[xlbo]

Can you not just use Access ??

Rgds, Geoff
[blue]Si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni in rebus Latinus alacribus et fructuosis potiri potes![/blue]
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[yuriyking]

2 xlbo

It was just a question of my friend.
He cannot use Access because he need to process this 2000*3000 table for his diploma thesis, he knows only Excel, he is far away from IT and don't want spend his time for learning Access.

 

[xlbo]

fair enough - good luck to him - that's a monster table to have to process in a spreadsheet - 6m records

Rgds, Geoff
[blue]Si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni in rebus Latinus alacribus et fructuosis potiri potes![/blue]
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