Max memory configured for Excel Services Application exceeded - Event 5255 (SharePoint Server 2010)

 

Applies to: SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise

Alert Name:   Maximum memory configured for Excel Services Application has been exceeded

Event ID:   5255

Summary:   Administrators of Excel Services Application can determine how much memory the service should use on each physical computer that runs Excel Services Application. This is an important setting because Excel Services Application is calculation-intensive and maintains state, and can require a large amount of memory. The amount of memory that the server for Excel Services Application can consume is specified with the MaxPrivateBytes property. This problem occurs when the server consumes more memory than is allocated in this property setting.

Symptoms:   One or more of the following symptoms might appear:

  • Workbooks fail to load.

  • Users experience miscellaneous error messages; for example, An error has occurred.

  • Performance of workbooks is poor.

  • This event appears in the event log: Event ID: 5255 Description: Maximum Private Bytes size exceeded. Unable to complete the operation.[Session: <session ID> User: <username> ].

Cause:   Excel Services Application has exceeded its MaxPrivateBytes setting value, and requests to the server are being denied as a result.

Ensure your servers have enough RAM memory to serve the number of users

  1. Ensure that your servers have enough RAM memory and that your Excel Services Application deployment is large enough to support your user base. For more information, see Determine resource requirements to support Excel Services Application.

Increase the MaxPrivateBytes setting

  1. On Central Administration home page, click Application Management.

  2. On the Application Management page, under Service Applications, click Manage service applications.

  3. Click on the Excel Services Application. By default this has the name “Excel Service Application”.

  4. On the Manage Excel Services Application page, click Global Settings.

  5. On the Excel Services Application Settings page, under Memory Utilization, type the number of megabytes (MB) of RAM memory that you want Excel Services Application to use.

  6. Click OK.