65,536 row limit in Excel 10(Office2000) and 11(OfficeXP) increased to 1,048,576 rows in Excel 12(Office2007)

Excel 2000, Excel 2003 (XP) have a row limit of 65536 rows. If you try to import a text file with more rows, it will only import the first 65536 rows. David Gainer (GPM of the Excel team in Microsoft) in his excel 12 blog states that this limit has been increased in Excel 12:

Probably the most common question the Excel team gets from our customers is “when are you going to add more rows/more columns/more rows and more columns”. There are many different scenarios behind these requests. Some customers want to be able to analyze more data than Excel has rows, some customers want to track more daily information than Excel has columns, and other customers want to perform matrix math on large matrices of thousands of elements. There are plenty of other scenarios too. Well, the answer to the question is “in Excel 12.” Specifically, the Excel 12 grid will be 1,048,576 rows by 16,384 columns. That’s 1,500% more rows and 6,300% more columns than in Excel 2003, and for those of you that are curious, columns now end at XFD instead of IV.

This is an exciting feature for us, because it is a feature that helps a very broad range of our customers, and we are looking forward to seeing what folks create with a bigger grid.

Of course, rows and columns aren’t the only things customers have been asking for more of. Next time, I will review all of the other places where Excel 12 gives you “more”.