Desktop Excel has a row limit of 1,048,576 rows and a column limit of 16,384 columns. The Excel row limit exists because desktop Excel runs locally on

The Excel Row Limit is 1,048,576 Rows

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2024-10-25 03:30:05

Desktop Excel has a row limit of 1,048,576 rows and a column limit of 16,384 columns. The Excel row limit exists because desktop Excel runs locally on a user's computer and is limited to the memory (RAM) and compute (CPU) resources on the computer. Spreadsheets perform both data storage and analysis in one application, which requires greater memory usage. As data sets have grown, it has become more common to encounter Excel's row limit. In fact, other spreadsheets, like Google Sheets and Apple Numbers, also have row limits.

In the post below, we provide 5 solutions for working with big datasets that exceed the Excel row limit. If you are looking for a quick solution, try Row Zero, a next-gen spreadsheet built for big data that can handle giant billion row datasets (1,000x Excel's row limit) and complex models. Continue reading or use the table of contents to skip to specific sections.

Desktop Excel is exceptionally fast when data sets are small to medium sized. However, Excel starts to slow down well before the row limit is hit. We wrote about the symptoms of slow Excel spreadsheets in a previous post. For datasets larger than the maximum number of rows, the size is an obstacle and as the world accumulates more data, users will more frequently hit Excel's performance limits.