Recently the NICAR mailing list (for journalists who use computer assisted reporting) discussed how they dealt with datasets that were ‘too big for Excel’. With their permission, I’m reproducing a digest of the highlights.

How much is too much

Different versions of Excel have different limits to the data they can handle. From a million rows in Excel 2010 to just 16,000 rows by 256 columns in Excel 5, Office Watch gives a good rundown of the various versions.

Tom Torok points out that Excel 2007’s million row limit is per sheet, rather than per workbook (spreadsheet), so if you have Continue reading →