Excel crashing on AutoSum

[Traxan]

(Phooey, I can't change the subject line. I meant AutoSum, not sort)

For once, this isn't my problem it's my dad's. He recently developed a bug in his Excel spreadsheet where he tracks all of his investments that causes Excel to crash. There are several ways but one guaranteed to do it: AutoSum.Click AutoSum in the SS and poof.

The tricky part is he is using Excel 2003 (on a Windows 10 PC). He's a bit stingy and won't upgrade, so I can't tell him to do the obvious.

I have worked with the file on my PC, using Office 2010, and it works flawlessly. Also, I created a whole new spreadsheet and AutoSum behaved.

So it would seem the problem is confined to his computer and likely the spreadsheet. I'm at a loss to debug this and I am the tech support line for him, so there's no ignoring this one and hope it will go away. Suggestions?

 

[Tweak155]

(Phooey, I can't change the subject line. I meant AutoSum, not sort)

For once, this isn't my problem it's my dad's. He recently developed a bug in his Excel spreadsheet where he tracks all of his investments that causes Excel to crash. There are several ways but one guaranteed to do it: AutoSum.Click AutoSum in the SS and poof.

The tricky part is he is using Excel 2003 (on a Windows 10 PC). He's a bit stingy and won't upgrade, so I can't tell him to do the obvious.

I have worked with the file on my PC, using Office 2010, and it works flawlessly. Also, I created a whole new spreadsheet and AutoSum behaved.

So it would seem the problem is confined to his computer and likely the spreadsheet. I'm at a loss to debug this and I am the tech support line for him, so there's no ignoring this one and hope it will go away. Suggestions?

My first thought is that his investments aren't paying off if he can't spend money to upgrade, but I'm sure that doesn't help

My helpful thought is that the jump from Excel 2003 to 2007 was likely one of the biggest upgrades overall to Excel. Since the spreadsheet works fine in 2010, it's possible you're hitting a mathematical limitation in 2003. Excel has a lot of quirky hidden maximums you wouldn't even think to be concerned about, like max number of Shape objects for example. In 2003 these limits are a lot lower than 2007 and later since 2007 was the first true support of 64 bit operations.

That said, there are tricks out there to check to see if your particular worksheet is hitting any of them (and tricks to fix those problems if it is), but the better solution is to upgrade.