All 2007 worksheets have columns out to XFD and these columns cannot be
removed.

If you are selecting only columns A to G and doing a sort, the excess
columns are not your problem.

Excel is re-arranging the data only in the selected columns.

28,000 rows times 7 columns could be considered a fairly large range to sort
and will require some resources.

I feel the inability of Excel to do the job depends upon available resources
on your computer.

Can you dump some other applications to recover more resources and try
again?


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:33:06 -0700, Accountantgirl
wrote:

I exported a large amount of data from Access to Excel 2007. There are
28,000 rows but only 7 columns. The worksheet has columns out to XFD. When
I try to sort the data, I'm told the "Excel cannot complete the task with
available resources. Chose less data or close other applications". I am
only selecting the 7 columns for sorting, but because there are so many
columns, the task cannot be done.