Microsoft's article 64-bit Editions of Office 2010 says, 'this additional capacity is needed only by those Microsoft Excel users who require Excel spreadsheets that are larger than 2 gigabytes (GB). Palisade software works with 64-bit Excel, but not all other add-ins do. The same article warns that third-party add-ins and controls may not work with 64-bit Excel. In Choose the 32-bit or 64-bit Version of Office 2016, which actually applies to Office 2010–2016, Microsoft says 'We recommend the 32-bit version of Office, because it helps prevent compatibility issues with most other applications, especially third-party add-ins.' For this reason, by default Office installs itself as a 32-bit application, even in 64-bit Windows. If your data size is under 2 GB★, you can more easily hold all data in RAM by simply not running other memory-hungry applications at the same time. There is no speed improvement from 64-bit code as such, only from holding data in RAM and not paging it out to disk. Running 'Out of Process' gives technical details.Ħ4-bit Office is recommended when you have gigabytes of data and you have enough physical memory to store it, because then the data can all be held in RAM without being paged out to disk. This is especially noticeable in simulations involving Microsoft Project. Some features of our software releases 7.6 will run faster in 32-bit Excel, because they normally run in process. The same is true for the other tools: unless you have a really massive workbook, larger than 2 GB★, you will not see faster performance from 64-bit Excel. Most models will not run faster in 64-bit Excel. See Memory Used by Simulations to estimate the size of your simulation data. If you work with large simulations in more than 2 GB★ of data, you may benefit from 64-bit Excel.

If I switch to 64-bit Excel, will I get faster performance?

There's no need for separate Palisade installers for 32-bit and 64-bit code. With recent versions of and all our other tools, the installer automatically detects 32-bit Excel or 64-bit Excel and works with it.

Use ms office 32bit or 64bit?