32-bit vs 64-bit Excel for Workday OfficeConnect

Why 64-bit Excel matters for large Workday OfficeConnect workbooks, how to check which version you’re running, and how to switch without breaking other add-ins.
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The single biggest hardware-level ceiling for large Workday OfficeConnect workbooks isn’t your laptop’s RAM — it’s whether you’re running 32-bit or 64-bit Excel. 32-bit Excel caps each Excel process at roughly 2 GB of memory regardless of how much RAM you have. 64-bit Excel removes that ceiling. For OfficeConnect users pushing past a few hundred formulas with repeating rows and charts, this is often the difference between a workbook that opens and one that crashes.

What you’ll need:

  • Microsoft 365 or a recent perpetual Office license
  • Admin rights to reinstall Office (or your IT team)

The memory ceiling, in concrete terms

Every running program on Windows is a process. 32-bit processes can address about 2 GB of memory each — a hard architectural limit, not a configurable one. 64-bit processes can address terabytes (effectively unlimited for spreadsheet work).

For a small OfficeConnect workbook this never matters. Excel sits at 150-300 MB and you have plenty of headroom. For a large workbook — say 800 OfficeConnect formulas, several repeating-row regions, three or four charts pulling from those ranges — Excel can climb past 1.5 GB during refresh, and you start seeing:

  • “Excel ran out of resources” errors during refresh
  • The application going unresponsive (“Not Responding” in the title bar) for minutes
  • Outright crashes mid-refresh with no error
  • Charts that won’t redraw or copy/paste failures with “not enough memory”

64-bit Excel doesn’t make refresh faster (server calls are the same), but it removes the cliff.

When 32-bit Excel becomes the bottleneck

You’re likely hitting the 32-bit ceiling if any of these apply:

  • Workbook file size over 50 MB
  • More than 500 OfficeConnect formulas, especially with repeating rows
  • Several charts built on top of OfficeConnect ranges
  • Frequent unexplained crashes during refresh on a machine with plenty of free RAM
  • Other Excel workbooks open at the same time, each contributing to the 2 GB pool — note that each Excel window is part of the same process

If none of these apply, 32-bit is fine and switching is unnecessary.

How to check which Excel you have

1
Open Excel Any workbook will do.
2
Go to File then Account Click File in the ribbon, then Account in the left rail.
3
Click About Excel On the right side under Product Information, click About Excel. A dialog opens. The first line shows the version and build, and at the end of that line it reads 32-bit or 64-bit.

If it says 32-bit and you fit any of the symptoms above, plan a switch.

How to switch to 64-bit Excel

Bitness is set at Office install time. You cannot toggle it from inside Excel — you uninstall the 32-bit edition and install the 64-bit edition. Your files, settings, and OfficeConnect installation transfer cleanly because the OfficeConnect installer supports both.

1
Uninstall the current Office On Windows, open Settings → Apps → Installed apps, locate Microsoft 365 (or your Office edition), and click Uninstall. Reboot when prompted.
2
Install the 64-bit edition Sign in to office.com with the same account. On the install page, expand Other install options and select 64-bit. Run the installer. The install takes 10-20 minutes on a typical machine.
3
Reinstall Workday OfficeConnect The OfficeConnect add-in must be reinstalled to match the new Excel bitness. Download the installer from your Adaptive Planning tenant (the same package works for both 32 and 64-bit Excel) and run it.
4
Verify and reopen workbooks Repeat the File → Account → About Excel check. The dialog should now say 64-bit. Open your largest OfficeConnect workbook and refresh — it should now complete without memory errors.

Tradeoffs and gotchas

  • Legacy COM add-ins. Older custom add-ins built for 32-bit Excel (Bloomberg, FactSet, Capital IQ, and any internally-built .xla or .xll files) may not have a 64-bit build. Check each add-in’s documentation before switching, and confirm a 64-bit version exists.
  • VBA with Declare statements. Macros that call Windows APIs via Declare need PtrSafe keywords for 64-bit. Excel will refuse to run unmodified 32-bit Declare calls.
  • No performance gain for small workbooks. Don’t expect faster refresh on a 100-formula report — 64-bit only helps when memory was the bottleneck.
For admins & power users For company-wide rollouts, coordinate with your IT team. Many organizations standardize on 32-bit Office because of legacy COM add-ins; getting a 64-bit exception for FP&A users is usually straightforward but requires a documented business case. A frequently-crashing budget workbook is exactly the kind of case that makes the request easy.

Result

Large OfficeConnect workbooks that previously crashed or hung mid-refresh now open and refresh reliably. You’ve removed an architectural ceiling that no amount of workbook tuning could work around.

Next steps

Last modified May 19, 2026: Rename 'Get Started' section to 'Wiki' site-wide (6ebea16d)