4 ms·

> Next time, we’ll see what we can do to extend this timeout. That, somehow, seems like the wrong conclusion. Why not try to solve the problem of Excel taking

> Next time, we’ll see what we can do to extend this timeout. That, somehow, seems like the wrong conclusion. Why not try to solve the problem of Excel taking longer than 30 seconds to export a RTF table?

kencausey 4y ago
Given the range of computers on which Excel is likely to be running that seems like a complete non-starter. There will always be cases that take longer than X no matter what you choose for X.
- capableweb 4y ago
  Yeah, why not display a "Exporting..." dialog then that the user themselves can cancel if they think it's taking too long? Extending the timeout to X won't solve anything.
  - elpocko 4y ago
    When you press Ctrl+V, the target window is focused. Forcibly switching back to Excel to show this dialog seems weird and confusing to me.
    - glenneroo 4y ago
      Then why not show a system dialog similar to copy/move files dialog after e.g. 5 seconds of waiting for a copy-to-clipboard operation?
      - hackmiester 4y ago
        Actually, now that you point out that this could be done, I’m surprised it wasn’t.
seritools 4y ago
Cool, now it's optimized and it manages to export up to a million lines in 30 seconds. What do you propose to do when the next customer wants to copy 1.5 million lines?
- hermitdev 4y ago
  > What do you propose to do when the next customer wants to copy 1.5 million lines? Thankfully, that can't happen :). XLSX has a row limit of 1,048,576 rows. In all seriousness, I don't have an answer for you other than that the developer that's looking to shove >1M excel rows around should find a better solution than the clipboard. I've done more than my fair share of work pushing excel spreadsheets around (and I've even worked on Excel add-ins). There are plenty of performant ways of accessing large volumes of Excel data, none of them involve the clipboard. Most of them even work on non-Windows platforms. The arbitrary row & column limits in Excel (XLS was pretty small, XLSX is quite a bit bigger, but still arbitrary) are annoying and I cannot begin to tell you how many hours over the years I've wasted due to this limitation or Excel silently truncating large CSV files on import.
  - londons_explore 4y ago
    Indeed - it would be very possible to make a version of Excel which can deal with infinite-sized sheets by leaving most of the data on disk and only loading a few screenfulls at once.
    - eropple 4y ago
      "Very possible" reads to me a bit cheat-y, in that you could do so but you probably don't want or need to. Paging a workbook out to disk in this way necessitates keeping a cell-to-cell relational map for everything and then paging it back in when you then need to pointer-chase through a set of updates--well, you've just reinvented virtual memory but worse, haven't you? Excel is an intensely business-critical product and has a lot of smart folks working on it. There are tradeoffs you're eliding and I'm confident that they know of them.
passivate 4y ago
I don't think its realistic to expect a Windows developer to solve a problem in Excel!

kencausey 4y ago

Given the range of computers on which Excel is likely to be running that seems like a complete non-starter. There will always be cases that take longer than X no matter what you choose for X.

capableweb 4y ago
Yeah, why not display a "Exporting..." dialog then that the user themselves can cancel if they think it's taking too long? Extending the timeout to X won't solve anything.
- elpocko 4y ago
  When you press Ctrl+V, the target window is focused. Forcibly switching back to Excel to show this dialog seems weird and confusing to me.
  - glenneroo 4y ago
    Then why not show a system dialog similar to copy/move files dialog after e.g. 5 seconds of waiting for a copy-to-clipboard operation?
    - hackmiester 4y ago
      Actually, now that you point out that this could be done, I’m surprised it wasn’t.

seritools 4y ago

Cool, now it's optimized and it manages to export up to a million lines in 30 seconds. What do you propose to do when the next customer wants to copy 1.5 million lines?

hermitdev 4y ago
> What do you propose to do when the next customer wants to copy 1.5 million lines? Thankfully, that can't happen :). XLSX has a row limit of 1,048,576 rows. In all seriousness, I don't have an answer for you other than that the developer that's looking to shove >1M excel rows around should find a better solution than the clipboard. I've done more than my fair share of work pushing excel spreadsheets around (and I've even worked on Excel add-ins). There are plenty of performant ways of accessing large volumes of Excel data, none of them involve the clipboard. Most of them even work on non-Windows platforms. The arbitrary row & column limits in Excel (XLS was pretty small, XLSX is quite a bit bigger, but still arbitrary) are annoying and I cannot begin to tell you how many hours over the years I've wasted due to this limitation or Excel silently truncating large CSV files on import.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  Indeed - it would be very possible to make a version of Excel which can deal with infinite-sized sheets by leaving most of the data on disk and only loading a few screenfulls at once.
  - eropple 4y ago
    "Very possible" reads to me a bit cheat-y, in that you could do so but you probably don't want or need to. Paging a workbook out to disk in this way necessitates keeping a cell-to-cell relational map for everything and then paging it back in when you then need to pointer-chase through a set of updates--well, you've just reinvented virtual memory but worse, haven't you? Excel is an intensely business-critical product and has a lot of smart folks working on it. There are tradeoffs you're eliding and I'm confident that they know of them.

passivate 4y ago

I don't think its realistic to expect a Windows developer to solve a problem in Excel!