How to open a huge excel file efficiently

Question

I have a 150MB one-sheet excel file that takes about 7 minutes to open on a very powerful machine using the following:

# using python
import xlrd
wb = xlrd.open_         


        

Answer 1

Another way that should improve largely the load/operation time is a RAMDrive

create a RAMDrive with enough space for your file and a 10%..20% extra space...
copy the file for the RAMDrive...
Load the file from there... depending on your drive and filesystem the speed improvement should be huge...

My favourite is IMDisk toolkit
(https://sourceforge.net/projects/imdisk-toolkit/) here you have a powerfull command line to script everything...

I also recommend SoftPerfect ramdisk
(http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/softperfect_ram_disk.html)

but that also depends of your OS...