Excel - Disable Hardware Acceleration setting missing?

Question

Using Office 365 desktop edition, March 28th 2023 updates in Excel the option to disable hardware acceleration has disappeared. OS is Win 10 Enterprise, 21H2 fully updated.

With it enabled, I presume the now current default it causes problems on some very large spreadsheets.

I expect its now a registry hack to disable it?

The setting is still in Teams so seems odd its disappeared.

Answer 1

This seems unhelpful, to say the least. I would think newer releases would equate to new features, rather than a loss of existing features that are helpful.

Why do I have to disable hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling for my ENTIRE COMPUTER in order to turn that off for Excel? I bought a computer with a really nice NVIDIA graphics card for a reason, not just to turn it off. I too occasionally have the freezing screen problems in Excel, and generally, killing the process thread and restarting Excel takes care of the problem.

To put it in another perspective, it's like if you have a problem with the power windows in your car not working properly:

Me: Hey Microsoft, how do I fix the power windows in my car not working?

Microsoft: Remove the power windows from the car - problem solved. Oh, and sorry your seat is soaked from last night's rain.

Sheesh guys, come on.

Answer 2

As noted by another poster, this is a terrible recommended fix. It will disable hardware acceleration for all apps, not just the Microsoft 365 desktop apps that cannot handle it correctly. So in order to compensate for poor programming in the Microsoft apps I have to forego the use of my costly NVIDIA video card GPU for the Mentor CAD software I run? And for the Pinnacle Studio video editing software that uses it to speed up video rendering? And for all the Adobe Creative Suite programs? All of these widely used non-Microsoft programs work just fine with the hardware acceleration.

If Microsoft's software cannot reliably run in a GPU-assisted graphics environment like everything else, then they should either fix that or restore the option in the M365 desktop apps to disable the hardware graphics acceleration for their apps only.

Answer 3

Grrrrrrrr! Why on earth has the option to disable hardware acceleration been removed from Excel?

I have to go and turn it off every time I get an Excel update.

When I am dealing with large datasets Excel crashes every time I chart spectrometer data (scientific user of Excel) the datasets are 8 lines of around 4,000 points each.

With hardware acceleration Excel just goes to a black screen and the Excel window contains the dreaded phrase "(not responding)" and naturally, the autorecover has crapped out so nothing has been saved either.

Please put the disable hardware acceleration back in and don't make me have to disable hardware acceleration for the ENTIRE COMPUTER just because someone at Microsoft has decided "there's nothing wrong with Excel" when there clearly is!

Answer 4

Microsoft isn't going to change their practices, its never been a better time to find alternatives like Google Docs, Google Sheets, and others out there, much better and they actually care to make things useful for their clients. Microsoft lost their web page, their browser, their email service, they simply do not care, office was great for 10 years, but they are destroying their products continually by themselves. As a person that uses their computer for work, Windows 11 and all the changes have simply made it impossible to work on that platform without having bugs of all sorts mess up your day or make a 5 minute task turn into an hour each day... Look at this, I spent already 15 minutes here, complaining about something that doesnt work and that wont be fixed.. I shouldn't have to be here telling them that their new Office product doesnt work with NVIDIA graphics which make at least half of their clients.

Answer 5

Please stop flooding the internet with bad advice. This should be reportable.