Is it possible to limit the memory usage of a particular process on Windows

A user is doing calculations in Excel on very large sheets (upwards of 500mb) even with 16GB of ram, Excel (64-bit) will eat up all existing memory,I have seen it use upwards of 11GB of system memory.

Is there a way to say limit it somewhere reasonable at like 8GB so the system isn't bogged down and swapping through the pagefile to open a new tab in Chrome?


I understand here the question is to find a way to limit the memory used by a process, no matter the impact of performance.

On Windows Server, you could do this using a tool called the Windows System Resource Manager which can limit the amount of working set that a process uses. This tool is installable (not installed by default) through the Add Features console on Windows Server 2008 R2.

On Windows 7/8/10 there is no Microsoft solution able to do this. You have to install a third party software like the following :

  • Process Tamer : https://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/proctamer/

  • Process Lasso : https://bitsum.com/


Process Governor worked great for me. Open source, MIT License, easy to use:

procgov --maxmem 40M your_app.exe