Excel file is much larger than it should be

In some cases, you may have an excel spreadsheet with only a small amount of information in it, but the file size for that spreadsheet is extremely large. This is usually caused by an excess amount of empty rows for which Excel is still saving information.

WARNING: Before attempting this, it is recommended you backup your excel file so you do not accidently delete actual data.

To remove these "empty" rows, you must locate the sheet with the excess rows by clicking through each sheet in the spreadsheet and pressing Ctrl-End (Hold down the 'Ctrl' key and press the 'End' key). When you press Ctrl-End, the cursor will jump to the cell which Excel thinks is the end of your data. If this cell is WAY past the actual end of your data then these excess rows must be removed.

To remove the excess rows from the sheet:

Press Ctrl-End
Highlight the row which excel thinks is the end of your data (the one it jumped to when you pressed Ctrl-End).
Scroll back up to the actual end of your data.
Hold down Shift and hightlight an empty row after the actual end of your data.
Right click in the highlighted area and choose "Delete".
Scroll back to the top of the sheet and click on any cell so that nothing is selected anymore.
Save your workbook.

You should now see the size of the workbook significantly decrease. If you repeat this process for all sheets in your workbook, the excel file should end up being a reasonable size.

Other causes for large workbooks:

High-resolution pictures inside the workbook.
Video files or other large files embedded within the document.
Large amounts of data and formulas.

If you have any other methods of fixing this problem, please share them with us using the comment system below.

Author: DPAK
Created: May 3 2006
Categories: Excel
TechByte #138

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