Excel 2010: Use the 32 or 64 bit edition? 32 Bit might be wiser…
The new version of Office, Office 2010 (Office twenty-ten) will be available in both a 32 bit and a 64 bit version. All previous version of Office were 32 bit. Office 2010 will be released in the first half of 2010.
At this moment our advise is to install the 32 bit version of Office, even if you have a 64 bit OS. In this post I give you a few reasons why we think it is in most cases the best solution. Until there is proof of great benefits, the 32 bit version seems to be the best for compatibility and you don't seem to anything significant.
First, according to Microsoft: "64-bit Excel, simply put, is for building really really (really) big workbooks."
There a few things to keep in mind before you choose to install the 64 bit version of Office 2010:
- Most add-ins don't support the 64 bit version of Excel 2010
- At this moment ASAP Utilities does not work with the 64 bit version of Excel 2010, it only works with the 32 bit versions of Excel. In order to support the 64 bit version of Excel 2010 we have to create a special 64 bit version for it. However, the current tool we use from MS doesn't support that (MS Office Developer edition). Furthermore, at this moment Office is still a beta version from which MS hasn't released all the details yet, which makes the development of a 64 bit version uncertain. Besides we do need to use another program for the development of ASAP Utilities, which will probably be Visual Studio 2010, but that isn't released yet either. They way I see it at this moment is that it might perhaps be wise to see how many people will actually use the 64 bit version of Excel and then we can see if we can justify the extra time and money we need to put into the development of a special 64 bit version and maintaining both a standard 32 bit and a 64 bit version.
- The only major advantage of the 64 bit version at this moment seems to be that it can handle Excel files larger than 2 GB (2 Gigabyte!).
- No guarantee for speed. Unlike you might expect, the 64 bit version isn't twice as fast as the 32 bit version. Quote from the MS Excel blog: "I’ve heard some people comment that 64-bit Excel means that it’ll just run faster than 32-bit Excel. Well, that’s not true as a general rule. We have some tests that run a bit faster on 64-bit Excel, and other tests that run a bit slower on 64-bit Excel."
Interesting source to read:
MS Announcing the 64 bit version of Excel:
http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2009/08/28/excel-2010-now-with-more-bits.aspx
Office 2010 Beta – 32-bit or 64-bit – The Choice is Clear
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2009/11/23/office-2010-beta-–-32-bit-or-64-bit-–-the-choice-is-clear/
MS Office 2010 website:
http://www.office2010themovie.com/
MS Office 2010 forums
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/office2010general/threads
MS: Understanding 64-Bit Office
http://blogs.technet.com/office2010/archive/2010/02/23/understanding-64-bit-office.aspx
Filed under: ASAP Utilities on December 7th, 2009 by Bastien | 14 Comments »
Hi Bastien,
May the couple Live 1000 years !
I have Office 2003 and Office 2007 installed on my home PC. I have downloaded the Beta version of Office 2010. Is it advisable to install the same on my PC. I don’t have any other PC to try Office 2010. Are there any known issues which can damage my system ?
Regards
Kanwaljit
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by James Dutton, Rice Communications. Rice Communications said: RT @insightr: Word of warning from Microsoft: Don't buy 64bit version of Office 2010 or your plugins likely won't work: http://bit.ly/59aSBR [...]
Hello Kanwaljit,
I do think it is possible to install the Office 2010 beta version on a computer next to an existing Office version, but I haven’t tested it myself. During the installation you can choose to keep your existing Office versions.
When it comes to Excel I don’t expect any issues by you probably want to be careful with Outlook. However I’d recommend using a program such as MS Virtual PC to test new software.
Kind regards,
Bastien
Hello Kanwaljit,
I have on my computer all three versions of office – 2003, 2007 and 2010 and they are working quite well.
Regards,
Dan
Hi Dan,
Ditto with me. I do have all the versions on the same system. I was quite reluctant with 2007, but for reasons unknown to me, I have started using Excel 2010 on a regular basis. Doesn’t appear to be strange, whereas it was not the case with Excel 2007. I am having some issues with Pivot Table compatibility besides some strange message like “The file is corrupt”, whereas it was opening correctly. Do you experienced any such issues ?
Regards
Kanwaljit
Can you please review ExcelDashboard.org with latest excel 2010 and check if it works through the ODBC connection?
Hello NJ (Nilesh?),
You can download the beta of Office 2010 and test it yourself.
If it also works in Excel 2007 then it will probably work just fine in Excel 2010. However if you use macros you might need to make adjustments for the 64 bit version of Excel 2010. As far as I can see however you program only uses Excel as a format to read data from.
Kind regards,
Bastien Mensink
Hi Bastien,
May the couple Live 1000 years !
http://www.jkp-ads.com/Articles/RegisterUDF01.asp
Might be of interest to you !
Regards
Kanwaljit
and this one too….
http://www.andypope.info/vba/ribboneditor.htm
I am experimenting with large Excel files and the 64k limit on rows is a handicap. I am using Office 2010 (Beta) 32 bit with 32 bit Win 7. Will changing to 64 bit Excel with a 64 bit OS give me more space? I own 32 bit Office 2007 but it is not currently installed.
Hello Jerry,
No that doesn’t change it, it has another cause (with an easier solution).
Your workbook is probably in “compatibility mode”, meaning the old Excel 97-2003 format.
It is probably a workbook created there and then opened in the new Excel version.
By default then you don’t get the extra amount of rows. If you save it in the new Excel 2007/2010 (xlsx) format then you will get over 1 million rows.
Kind regards,
Bastien
Hi!
I installed the “click-to-run” version of Office 2010 Beta. ASAP install worked fine (except the Excel start out of the installer, but that’s no obstacle).
In Excel / File / Options / Add-ins ASAP is listed as a “COM-Add-In” – but under the “Inactive Add-Ins” section.
When I activate it, I still don’t see any ASAP tab.
And after a restart of Excel it’s in the “Inactive Add-Ins” section again.
Any hints?
Thanks a lot, and best regards
Heinz
Hello Heinz,
Thank you for your feedback.
My apologies for the delayed reply, next time, please send me an email when you have problems such as these.
Unfortunately I cannot reproduce this behavior. I have no idea why Excel moves it to the “inactive add-ins” section every time and this problem hasn’t reported before. Normally during the installation it should be placed as an active add-in. In fact, it should be listed twice as active add-in, once the library component (COM add-in) and once as a normal add-in.
Are you using the latest beta version available from MS? I have tested it with the beta version of Excel 2010 (14.0.4006).
Perhaps the following articles in the FAQ can help you:
http://www.asap-utilities.com/faq-questions-answers-detail.php?m=44
http://www.asap-utilities.com/faq-questions-answers-detail.php?m=74
Please let me know if this solves your problem. If you have solved it another way then please share that information here too.
If you need additional information, please let me know.
Kind regards,
Bastien Mensink
I had the same problem (Windows7/Office 2010 Beta). The solution for me was uninstalling ASAP Utilities and reinstalling it to partition E. Now it works perfectly. Of course you don’t have to create a partition, you can try to reinstall ASAPUtilities (I believe) to anywhere outside of the Program FIles directory. Say, to C:/ASAP/