Excel Row Limit: How Many Rows and Columns a Sheet Holds

The Excel row limit is 1,048,576 rows per worksheet, and each sheet also has 16,384 columns, ending at column XFD. That size is fixed in every modern version of Excel. This guide is for anyone who imports large exports or CSV files and wants to know what fits, what happens when data is too big, and what to do instead.

How many rows and columns does Excel have?#

A worksheet in Excel 2007 and later, including Microsoft 365 and current Excel for Mac, has 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns. The very last cell is XFD1048576.

Both numbers are powers of 2: 1,048,576 is 2 to the power of 20, and 16,384 is 2 to the power of 14.

A few other limits are worth knowing:

• A single cell holds up to 32,767 characters.
• A column can be up to 255 characters wide, and a row up to 409 points tall.
• The number of sheets in a workbook is limited only by your computer's memory.

How to see the last row and column yourself#

You can jump to the edge of the grid with one shortcut. Click any cell in an empty column, then:

In a column with data, the same shortcut stops at the last filled cell instead, which is how most people find the end of a list. The guide to jumping with Ctrl+Arrow explains when it stops and why.

You can also type XFD1048576 into the Name Box (left of the formula bar) and press Enter. Formulas confirm the size too: =ROWS(A:A) returns 1,048,576 and =COLUMNS(1:1) returns 16,384.

Why does my file only show 65,536 rows?#

If a sheet stops at row 65,536 and column IV, the workbook is in the old .xls format. Excel shows [Compatibility Mode] in the title bar when this happens, and it keeps the old grid so the file still opens in Excel 2003.

To get the full grid:

1. Go to File > Save As.
2. Choose Excel Workbook (.xlsx) as the file type.
3. Close the file and open the new .xlsx copy.

On Windows, File > Info > Convert does the same job in one step.

What happens when a CSV has more than 1,048,576 rows?#

Excel opens the first 1,048,576 rows and shows a File not loaded completely message. Everything after that is simply not in the sheet. Your totals will be wrong, and if you save the file over the original CSV, the extra rows are gone for good.

Watch for the header row too. A file with exactly 1,048,576 data rows plus a header is one row too many.

The guide to importing CSV files shows the safer Data > From Text/CSV route, and CSV vs XLSX explains why a CSV has no row limit of its own: it is just text, so it can be far bigger than any sheet.

How to work with more data than the row limit#

You can't make a sheet bigger, but you have several ways around the limit:

• Split the data. Put each year or region on its own sheet or in its own file, then summarise with SUMIFS or a pivot table.
• Use Power Query. Go to Data > Get Data, load the file, and filter or group it before it reaches the sheet. Often you only need a summary, not every row.
• Load to the Data Model. In the Power Query Close & Load To box, choose Only Create Connection and tick Add this data to the Data Model. The rows stay out of the grid, but a pivot table can still summarise all of them. This is available in Excel for Windows.
• Summarise at the source. If the data comes from a database or another system, ask for a daily or monthly summary instead of raw rows.

Near the limit, Excel also gets slow. Whole-column references like A:A and heavy formulas over a million rows can take a long time to calculate. The tips in why Excel formulas are slow help here.

Can you delete or hide unused rows?#

Deleting rows does not shrink the grid. Excel adds fresh empty rows at the bottom, so the sheet always has 1,048,576. What you can do is hide the unused area so readers only see your data:

1. Click the row number just below your data.
2. Press Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow (Mac: ⌘⇧+Down Arrow) to select every row to the end.
3. Right-click a row number and choose Hide.

Do the same with Ctrl+Shift+Right Arrow for columns. Selecting whole rows and columns this way is covered in how to select an entire row or column.

If Ctrl+End jumps far below your data, old formatting is stretching the "used range". Delete those empty rows and columns, then save the file, and Ctrl+End should land on your real last cell.

Practise it#

Moving around a big sheet quickly is a real job-test skill. Practise the jump shortcuts in a live spreadsheet to reach the end of a list in one keystroke, and learn how cells, rows and columns work in the basics lesson. Then try the exercise on this page to check whether four monthly exports still fit in one sheet.