How to fix memory getting exhausted with PHPExcel?

Question

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 1078799 bytes) in D:\\xampplite\\htdocs\\Scraper\\PHPExcel\\Reader\\Exc

Answer 1

One thing you should note too is empty cells.

I had the same issue, only 800 rows of data and the script was not even able to read. Both timeouts and out of memory errors when either was fixed.

Something @Mark Baker said about cells got me thinking. I noticed that I had loads of empty cells and copying only the cells with data to a new workbook got it to run in a second.

Hope this helps someone.