PowerPivot Size Limitations

[excel_vba_guru]

I stumbled upon this post while trying to figure out the size limits of PowerPivot.

http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/showthread.php?t=447852

I have a text file, delimited by a "|" (pipe), which has 22 columns and a little under 30 millions row. The text file is about 4.5 GB is size.

I started to import the file, and all was going well, until it hit about 18 million records (or what I presume to be 2GB in size). An error message about not enough memory was received. I am running 32-bit XP with 4GB of RAM.

I have two questions, first how was the text file of 18 million records only 58MB in size?

Secondly, how is this tool any more useful than access, if you are still bound by the 2GB size limitation (as taken from PowerPivot help, see below).

PowerPivot Help -> Section Learn About PowerPivot Capabilities
"...PowerPivot supports files up to 2GB in size and enables you to work with up to 4GB of data in memory..."

I look forward to hearing how the text file might have been saved.

Thanks,
Excel VBA Guru

 

[Derek Brown]

I have added my comments to the post http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/showthread.php?t=447852

 

[excel_vba_guru]

So it appears that we have another almost useless tool when it comes to real datasets. I am only trying to use this for 20 months of Journal Entries for one location. Makes it quite difficult to do any kind of trending when you have to work with the data in one year increments, per location. Is there a way to compress the source data to make it possible to load more into a single powerpivot file?

My current source file is pipe delimited with just under 30 million rows and 22 columns (fields) of data. I don't view this to be a "ton" of data. Just a good amount.

Thoughts?