File size (97 SR2)

[Murgatroyd]

I have an Excel 97 budgeting workbook that has gradually grown to about 500Kb over the years that I have been using and developing it. Today after making a few changes, the file size suddenly grew to nearly 2 Mb. As I hadn't cleared unused cells for a while, I did that on two of the three worksheets, but when I tried to clear the third, largest sheet, there was a large amount of disk activity, but after a while the computer stopped responding. I copied the file to a bigger/faster computer with Excel 2000 and was then able to clear all unused cells; however, the file size (standard, not 95/5.0) grew to nearly 3Mb! I also tried copying the sheets to a new workbook, but that had no effect on the file size. What should I do to minimize the file size?

[pieterse]

Sounds like a corruption of the third sheet.

Have you tried copying just the cells of interest to a new workbook?

[Murgatroyd]

Thank you for your reply. I just tried copying the needed cells from each sheet and pasting them into blank sheets in a new workbook, but the new file size was a few Kb larger! I then deleted some columns and data that have been added recently, but the file size then grew another few Kb!

[pieterse]

If you can find someone with Excel 2000, try this:

- open the file
- save-as, filetype WebPage
- close it
- open the webpage file
- save-as normal excel workbook.

[Murgatroyd]

I followed your suggestion and the file size grew from nearly 2 Mb to nearly 5 Mb! Also, when opening the Web version, Excel reported a problem loading conditional formatting, and referred to an error log in a folder that doesn't seem to exist. The resulting workbook seems otherwise OK, except that the conditional formatting is missing and the size is larger.

[pieterse]

What size do you get if you ZIP the file?

[Murgatroyd]

Since your last reply, I cleared and reapplied all formatting, after which the file size reverted to 437Kb (397Kb zipped). However, clearing the unused cells below and beside the used block of cells causes the file size to grow to 1,966Kb (1,753Kb zipped), which seems strange, since presumably clearing things should reduce the file size. My system stops responding (athough there is continous disk activity) when I try to clear the unused cells with Excel 97, so I am using a bigger/faster system with Excel 2000 to do the clearing.

[pieterse]

Formatting can cause the file to grow.

When applying a format, it is often advantagous to apply that format to an entire row or column as opposed to a large number of individual cells.
I am not sure how well Excel handles conditional formatting with respect to this though.