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Excel Limits - Maximum row, column, and file size limits

2025-02-09 // Mark Tressler

spreadsheet limits The Excel data size limits can make it a challenge to work with big data in Excel. The Excel maximum row is 1,048,576 and the maximum column is 16,384. Many businesses routinely work with larger datasets and need a solution for spreadsheets with more than 1 million rows.

In this post, we'll review the Excel limits and offer solutions to work with big data in a spreadsheet. The easiest solution is to use a more powerful spreadsheet. Row Zero is an enterprise-grade spreadsheet built for big data that supports billion row datasets (1000x Excel's limits). Try Row Zero for free or continue reading for other solutions to Excel limits.

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Table of Contents

Excel limits

Excel has workbook size limits with maximum row numbers and columns. While these represent the maximum data size, Excel may slow down or crash well before these limits, especially with many formulas or formatting applied. Here's a breakdown of Excel data limits:

  • Excel maximum row - 1,048,576
  • Excel maximum column - 16,384 (AFD)
  • Excel cell limit - 17,179,869,184
  • Character limit per cell - 32,767 visible in formula bar (only 1,024 visible in the cell)
  • Excel file size limit - 32-bit desktop Excel has a 2GB limit. 64-bit desktop Excel has no hard limit, but will be limited by your computer's RAM since it leverages your computer's local resources. Excel online has a 100MB file size limit with SharePoint Online.
  • File format limits - Excel natively can import .csv, .txt, and .xlsx files.
  • Limits connecting to data sources - There can be stricter limits when connecting to data sources. For example, exporting data from Power BI to Excel has a 150,000 row limit and live connections between Power BI and Excel are limited to a 500,000 row maximum.

There are also many formatting and number limits. Here is a full breakdown of Excel specifications and limits.

In addition to these strict application limits, Excel is limited by your computer's memory and processor speed since it relies on your local resources to run. For example, while there is no strict limit on the number of formulas, sheets, or pivot tables in a workbook, there is a practical limit since each of these will be eventually limited by the computer's resources.

Here's how your computer's resources limit Excel's performance:

  • RAM (memory) - Limits workbook size, Power Pivot, Power Query, and undo stack. For bigger Excel workbooks, it's recommended to have at least 16GB RAM.
  • CPU (processor) - Limits recalculation speed and formula evaluation. For complex Excel workbooks, it's recommended to have at least Intel i7 / AMD Ryzen 7 or better and a base clock ≥ 3.0 GHz and 4+ cores.
  • Disk (storage) - Affects load/save and temp file management. For big Excel sheets, it's recommended to have a solid state drive (SSD), at least 256GB.
  • Operating System - Windows 10/11 64-bit Pro ensures compatibility with Excel add-ins, Power Query, and large memory addressing. While you can get Excel for macOS, Excel works best on Windows. If you need a powerful spreadsheet for macOS, Row Zero is a good spreadsheet for Mac users with big data needs.

Excel limits vs top 5 spreadsheets

Here's how Excel's limits compare to other spreadsheet limits:

Maximum rows:

  1. Row Zero: 2,147,483,647 rows
  2. Google Sheets: 10,000,000 cells (actual row limit typically much lower)
  3. Microsoft Excel: 1,048,576 rows
  4. Calc (LibreOffice): 1,048,576 rows
  5. Apple Numbers: 1,000,000 rows

Maximum columns:

  1. Row Zero: 18,268 (ZZZ)
  2. Google Sheets: 18,268 (ZZZ)
  3. Microsoft Excel: 16,384 (XFD)
  4. Calc (LibreOffice): 1,024 (AMJ)
  5. Apple Numbers: 1,000 (ALL)

5 Solutions to Excel Limits

  1. Use a more powerful spreadsheet - Row Zero
  2. Import a subset of data
  3. Split your data into multiple files
  4. Use a Jupyter Notebook and Python, R, or SQL
  5. Ways to make Excel faster with big data

1. Use a more powerful spreadsheet - Row Zero

Row Zero is an enterprise-grade spreadsheet designed for big data. Row Zero works like Excel, but supports billion row spreadsheets (1000x Excel's limit) on Enterprise plans and millions of rows on a free plan. Row Zero runs in the cloud so it is not limited by your computer's resources and works well on any operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux). You can connect live to your data warehouse and build auto-updating connected spreadsheets on big, dynamic data. Operations that take minutes and hours in Excel take seconds in Row Zero.

While Excel is limited to CSV, TXT, and XLSX files under 1,048,576 rows, Row Zero can import a much wider range of files. You can easily open big CSV files more than 1 million rows, as well as Parquet, TXT, XLSX, and TSV. Row Zero will also automatically unzip and open .gz files.

Compare Row Zero vs Excel vs Google Sheets.

2. Import a subset of data

If you have a dataset or file too large for Excel, you can import the file to Excel and the file will be limited to Excel's maximum row of 1,048,576. Rows beyond this limit will be excluded from the workbook. excel row limit - too large for excel grid

If the data you need to work with is all within the first 1 million rows, then you can just continue working in Excel. It just may be slow to work with.

If you need to work with data beyond row 1,048,576, you can first load the dataset in another program or database, filter the dataset to under 1 million rows, and then import to Excel. Your two best options for this are:

  1. Row Zero - Row Zero can open big files and can connect directly to your database or data warehouse. You can open the file in Row Zero, filter it to something less than 1 million rows, export the filtered dataset to CSV, and then open the CSV in Excel. Note, you will need to be on a paid version of Row Zero in order to export CSVs.
  2. A BI tool, database, or data warehouse - If your data already lives in a BI tool, database, or data warehouse, you can write a query to filter the dataset to 1 million rows and then export to CSV. You can also connect Excel directly to many data sources using ODBC drivers or Excel add-ins. Here's how to connect Excel to Snowflake, Databricks, Redshift, and Postgres.

3. Split your data into multiple files

It's pretty common to split CSV and Excel files into multiple files to get under Excel's row limit. However, you should try to avoid splitting files if possible, because it can introduce manual errors, erode data integrity, and increase data security risks.

If you need to split a big file into multiple smaller files you have a few options:

  • Text editor - You can use a large text editor like Notepad++ to open the file and then copy and paste every million rows into a new file and save each individually.
  • Row Zero - You can similarly use Row Zero to open large files and copy and paste into sheets and export as smaller CSVs.
  • BI tool, database, or data warehouse - You can successively query subsets of data under 1 million rows and import to separate Excel files.
  • Python - You can use python to split the file into chunks of 1 million rows

4. Use a Jupyter Notebook and Python, R, or SQL

If you are comfortable working with code, you can use a Jupyter Notebook (or similar program) to analyze and filter your data directly with Python, R or SQL code. You can also use Python to split your files into smaller files to get under the 1 million row Excel limit. Note that Jupyter runs locally and is dependent on your computer's hardware but can handle larger data than Excel.

5. Ways to make Excel faster

As you approach the limits of Excel, you'll likely experience performance issues that make Excel slow or freeze. For complex spreadsheets, some power Excel users wait for minutes or even hours for Excel workbooks to open, update, filter, sort, or evaluate formulas. To keep Excel as fast as possible, try removing formatting, removing filters, switching to manual calculations, and optimizing formulas. Here are 10 ways to make Excel faster with big data.

Conclusion

Excel is the most popular spreadsheet application, but it wasn't built for the big datasets common in many organizations today. Excel has fundamental limits that prevent you from working with large datasets in Excel. In addition to Excel's application limits, Excel is limited by your computer's memory and CPU. If you need to work with data bigger than Excel's limits, try Row Zero. Row Zero is an enterprise-grade spreadsheet that is designed to work with big data and is a good alternative to Excel for big data. Row Zero free plans support millions of rows and Enterprise plans can support billion row spreadsheets (1000x bigger than the Excel maximum row).

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