Excel 2013 "not enough memory to complete action"

[ccruse]

I have followed many suggestions on trying to fix this and I believe it must be something embedded in my simple spread sheet that is causing the problem. I have five tabs on the spreadsheet and only two are affected. On the three normal pages, excel recognizes the information that I have entered as all that is needed to be sorted. Scrolling with the slide tab on the right side takes you to the bottom line of info as you slide the tab down. So does the bottom slide tab that takes you from column A, sliding right with the bottom tab, to the last column I use. Excel recognizes my "info" entered as all there is to sort or filter.

On the two other file tabs in this spreadsheet, excel tries to sort the entire workbook. All 1,047,000 lines and 17K columns or whatever it is. I cannot sort or filter these pages,. When entering any simple formula or adding info, a column or a line , Excel take upwards of five minutes to make the change. I've added memory and the computer has more than enough room. I have copied the page and the issue copies with it. I have recreated the page and moved the info line by line and it moves as well. Somewhere there is a setting to tell the program not to sort empty space. Any help would be appreciated. I've changed Virtual memory unchecked boxes and checked others. I've followed threads lleadign to wild fixes that do nothing for my issue. Where is Lotus 123 when you need it!

[Pete_UK]

Pressing the CTRL and End keys together will take you to what Excel thinks is the last used cell on the sheet. If this is way beyond where you think it is, then you need to adjust this used range. Highlight all the columns to the right of where you think the used range should end, and click Delete. Do the same for the rows below what you think is the used range. Then save the file, to make these changes permanent.

Hope this helps.

Pete

[newdoverman]

Welcome to Excelforum.

The message "not enough memory to complete action" unfortunately isn't a very descriptive message generated by Office from which diagnostics of the problem can proceed.

The best that you can do is to systematically eliminate possibilities.
I would start by opening Excel in Safe mode as described here https://support.office.com/en-us/art...3-528af4f7ac72. If the file acts normally then you know that something that was not loaded in Safe Mode is the culprit. The above link gives instructions to identify what was disabled. Enable the disabled items one at a time until the problem returns. Remove or update that item.

A program outside of Excel hogging memory is yet another cause. Open the Task Manage when the problem occurs and see what is hogging resources.

[ccruse]

Good info to start! Thanks
I opened the spreadsheet in safe mode and it acts normally (allowing me to sort the file). Of coarse it wants to sort the entire work book. I tried to highlight the empty space to the right of my work and the space below to delete the empty range but after doing it and going into the file it still wants to sort the entire workbook. So deleting empty space does not fix the issue. Safe mode did not bring the issue with it, which is good. the link mentioned did not describe how to "find" the culprit in safe mode. Is there something i should click on while in safe mode to see what was not brought over?
Thanks

[newdoverman]

This is from the link:
"To view the list of disabled items, display the Disabled Items dialog box by doing the following in the Microsoft Office program that you are using:
Click the File tab.
Click Options.
Click Add-Ins.
On the Manage menu, click Disabled Items, and then click Go."

You might also want to get this addin from Microsoft to eliminate excess formatting and to reset the last cell for the data. Excel 2013 isn't listed but neither is Excel 2010 that I have and it works perfectly.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/down....aspx?id=21649

This is supposed to be part of Excel 2013:
https://support.office.com/en-us/art...9-4874f7474738

I would install and run one of these, save and re-open Excel with the file, see if the problem persists, then try the Safe Mode again if the problems are not solved by eliminating the excess formatting.

You should be able to see what has been disabled by following the directions at the top of this message. Enable one the addins one at a time to see which one is the culprit causing the problems.