Display performance very low when running Excel on MacBook Pro 2017

Hello all,

I have bought Parrallel to run the Windows version of Microsoft Excel 2016 on Windows 10 (I need the PowerPivot feature and PowerBi Desktop). The virtual machine works absolutely fine except for Excel and Edge, these applications seem to have difficulties with the high resolution of the Retina screen. It's even worse on the 5K LG Ultrafine external display. Scrolling up or down a spreadsheet is a nightmare, the frame rate drops to almost unusable. It seems that even the calculations are long to compute - or to display.

I have a MackBook Pro 13" with an Intel Core i7 3,5 GHz 16 Mo RAM Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 1536 MB. Best configuration for the so far for the VM is to allow 4 CPUs / 8 Go RAM (but then the Mac slows down significantly...).

On Bootcamp with the latest Intel Graphics drivers it's better (but the display blinks with 2 seconds long black screens, making bootcamp unusable).

Could you please advise ?

Thanks, regards,

Kevin

 

Long-time Parallels user - principally for Excel. Using Office 365 version. MBP 13" late 2016 w16GB memory. Parallels running Win10 w8GB memory. Memory set to auto, but changed to 1GM with slight improvement. Since switching to PDv15 noticed graphics issue particularly with scrolling. Cannot smooth scroll either down or up. Using scroll bar to move up 1 screen at a time, lag after clicking, lag in response on screen. Dragging down equivalent of 2 or more screens, in addition to lag, screen jumps to new area in worksheet. Similar experience with Word. Very annoying. Need windows version for Power Pivot, KU Tools, etc. Slows down working with large spreadsheets. Maybe Catalina will help. Hope someone has suggestions. SM

 

Exactly same symptom with PD 15. I am using Office 365 on MBP 2016 i5 16GB 512GB SSD. Scrolling stutters so much that MAC Excel feels so smooth now. I hope Parallels address this issue soon and fix it.

 

So how have you done, bought a second laptop for Microsoft Excel only ? I seriously considering doing so.

 

I'm using win 10 and excel and when I connect my MBP 2017 to external displays, excel slows down, it's almost useless. I can't understand why external displays makes this.

 

Hi could you please reproduce the issue, collect the the tech report right after that and post the report's id here.

 

Using PD15 Windows 10 Pro 64bits.
Using 4 vCPU with 4GB assigned to the VM guest on NVMe virtual hard disk
Likely wise, the graphical performance generally in Microsoft Office (using 365) suite are lack lustre.
This is what I did to get the best out of the mud we are in now.
1) Disable H/W acceleration in any either PPT, EXCEL, or WORD app, it will be common across all
2) Disable subpixel rendering
3) Using scaled display instead of Retina

Enabling H/W acceleration basically slow down even drag and drop in Powerpoint with stutters
Scrolling in both Word and Excel is generally sluggish in feeling

 

I confirm that I achieved a significant improvement in disabling hardware acceleration for all Office Products (indeed disabling it in one application applies to all the Office suite). Still not as good as Excel on a Windows computer though...

 

MBP 13" 2018, i7-8559U, 16GB with external display LG UltraFine 5k.
PD15, Windows 10 LTSC 1809 (4 cores, 6GB memory), MS Office 2016.

It's impossible to work with either Word or Excel expanded to full screen. Scrolling and normal cursor movement with arrows on the keyboard are terribly slow.

Enabling / disabling HW acceleration does not change anything in principle. It is more or less possible to work only if you reduce the window size of Excel/Word by 50% of the screen.

What would you recommend Parallels Team?

 

Hi, could you please collect the tech report for the further issue investigation.
Please collect report right after the issue reproduced and post the report's ID here.

 

Parallels - is there an answer to this? I have the same issues. MacBook Pro. Like others - scrolling is a nightmare of delay and jumpiness - rendering the program useless. This is a core program for me - and one of the basic reasons to choose your software. Clearly it is a recurring issue. Can you please advise - has this been fixed?

 

Hi, could you collect the tech report once the issue reproduced please?
Also please post the report's ID here.

 

344171880
Sent.

 

Hi Parallels. I assume you guys are well aware of this issue - as this is a thread all with the exact same problem. I've sent my report and posted the ID. Can you let me know if this is resolvable/resolved already and what I should do? This is an essential program. Tax season. Value of your software could not be higher at this moment - and its needed. Thanks.

 

Please sorry for the delay in response.
According to your report you're using Parallels Desktop 15.0.0.
Could you update it to the latest build (15.1.4) and check the issue please?

 

Exact same problem here. Parallels Excel is unusable and have had to revert to Mac excel. This is such a huge disappointment as I bought Parallels to use excel in its "own" and supposedly better environment. This must be put right rapidly.

 

Hello, what is your Parallels Desktop version?

 

Hi Maria
It is brand new, Version 16.

My Mac is:
iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014)
4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4 GB

 

Thanks a lot for the provided information. Did you get the same issue with MS Word (for example) or any specific error message?

 

Hi Maria
Everything freezes quite often, Outlook especially as well as Edge. I am considering going back to just he mac versions as parallels is not working well for me.