Reduce the Size of an Excel File
I have been working with an Excel file for about 18 months -- each month I link to a monthly Excel data file. This gives me data in one file that I can use to trend many different segments. I am not sure when, but this file had ballooned to over 3 MBs. Finally this month when I tried to upload it to our intranet, I received a file size limit exceeded message.
I searched and searched, and could not find any thing that would compress or clean up the file. Finally I went to Google and found a solution. The credit goes to OzGrid Business Applications. Here is a link to the entire article, and below is what I had done to reduce the file size.
I searched and searched, and could not find any thing that would compress or clean up the file. Finally I went to Google and found a solution. The credit goes to OzGrid Business Applications. Here is a link to the entire article, and below is what I had done to reduce the file size.
- The first thing of course is to make a backup... just in case
- I then performed the following on each worksheet (only 2 in my case):
- Select a cell and press F5
- Click the Special... button
- Click the Blanks radio button
- Click OK
- Select Edit | Clear | All
- Manually go to the last row in the worksheet (do not use Edit menu shortcut)
- Select the entire row
- Press Ctrl + Shift + [down arrow]
- Select Edit | Clear | All
- Remember to repeat for each worksheet
- Save
Comments
Just a nice check would be (got it from some other site) to do CTRL-end and the selected cell should be at the last line of your workbook. Mine went to the 65555 or whatever is the max of the worksheet so it was clearly filled with blanks which were bloating the file.
Thanks!!
Another comment I might add is that if you are using vlook up and other commands, it is wise to do a paste special values to reduce the size.