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Can we reduce the size of an Excel file ?

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Question added by jhangeer bazmi , Computer Instructor and Operator , Imran Computer College Millat Chowk
Date Posted: 2017/03/09
Aamir Husain Ansari
by Aamir Husain Ansari , Electronics Engineer , Al Jazirah for Trading and Industry Co. Ltd.

Yes. We can use an online compressor to reduce the fie size.

Sidrah Yaseen
by Sidrah Yaseen , Psychologist , Combined Military Hospital Bahawalpur

Yess,we can reduce the size of an excel file.

Granville Cardoz
by Granville Cardoz , Event Operations Manager , Fleming.

If you Don’t want to edit or make changes to your Excel File, but still want to reduce the file size? Then the best option will be Zip’ing the excel file, it will reduce upto 90% of file size depending upon the images and objects in the excel file

Faraz Shaikh
by Faraz Shaikh , Supervisor, Inbound Logistics , Factory Of Methanol Chemicals Company - CHEMANOL

Shrink the excel file size more than 50% without losing DATA

please see the below link 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Oy63vU1nD0

Roxana Hoque
by Roxana Hoque , Researcher , Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC).

Save the file to Excel in binary (.xlsb). Doing this structures the workbook into a compressed folder that has many binary files. The amount of compression that you're going to get depends on the contents of the workbook. Also, you may find that opening, closing and saving the file takes longer than something saved just in regular (.xls) format.[1]

  • After you've saved the file as an .xlsb, highlight and delete all of the cells outside the data range (typically to the right and below).
  • Highlight the same cells and delete all formatting (colors, lines, etc.). Delete formatting for each for each sheet within the workbook.
  • Re-save the workbook as an .xlsx file. Check to see how much these actions reduced the file size.

Firas Shahadi
by Firas Shahadi , Training And Development Director , Muhayal Assir National Hospital

We need fist to define the file size.

is it the bytes of the file? is is the number of rows and columns? is it the calculation time for each sheet. etc..

there are plenty ways to reduce the file size of you mean just the bytes of the file.

 

  1. remove extra unnecessary formatting
  2.  avoid selecting the entire row and column and give it a format.
  3. remove extra rows and columns that are blanks. use Ctrl+End to know where is the last cell.
  4. there is more advance techniques in case this is not enough.

 

thank you for the question

 

Salam Waddah
by Salam Waddah , Staff Software Engineer , Hello Chef

There are many practices to reduce excel file size:

  • Get rid of special formatting if not necessary.
  • Don't use helper column if you know a formula that works out your issue without the extra column of data.
  • If you're advanced, try to avoid array operation formulas and find alternative formula (that will increase speed and reduce size)
  • Excel offers a file size reduction option but it only compresses the pictures and reduces it's quality so you're technically compressing the images inside of an excel table.
  • Don't use old Microsoft product, you can notice the huge difference in size for the same file produced in excel 2003 and excel 2016 for example.

But I believe you can't reduce a file size without removing content.

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