If you don’t want to alter the contents of the workbook, try these options first. Remove “blank space” in your sheets. This is definitely the most common source of large Excel file sizes, and fortunately one of the easiest to fix. Excel has a “used range” for every sheet in your workbook.
Excel has a “used range” for every sheet in your workbook. The larger this is, the bigger the file size becomes. For new & blank Excel files, the used range is only cell A1. But as you work on a file, it will increase to represent the rightmost column and furthest row that you’ve edited or formatted.
Excel is an amazing tool for analyzing and visualizing data sets. To visualize and make report we often need to save small chunks of data. These small chunks of data grow over time and make the files heavier. But data is not the only reason behind the large size of your excel file.
Another reason for large file size is having many unused or hidden worksheets in your Workbook. Each Excel Worksheet has it’s own share of metadata, more importantly, however, you may be keeping sheets with similar datasets, copies or unnecessary Pivot Tables that also take up a lot of space.
You should be thinking “Excel file is larger than it should be?”
Remove “blank space” in your sheets. This is definitely the most common source of large Excel file sizes, and fortunately one of the easiest to fix. Excel has a “used range” for every sheet in your workbook. The larger this is, the bigger the file size becomes. For new & blank Excel files, the used range is only cell A1.
But as you work on a file, it will increase to represent the rightmost column and furthest row that you’ve edited or formatted. Especially in older files, even if cells are blank and have no formatting, Excel may be treating them inside the used range, leading to a larger file size for no reason.
Additionally, if all the users of a shared workbook save and then close the workbook, the workbook may not decrease in file size as it should. Note Excel 2007 files are based on a combination of XML and compression, the file types are usually smaller than legacy XLS file types.
Why is it important to have small size of Excel file?
It is important to have small size of excel file. The first reason is loading time. If your excel file is large (2 mb or larger) you will notice longer loading time, reduced performance, unresponsiveness, etc. All this can be avoided if you keep your file size reasonable.
Why does inserting an image to an Excel workbook increase file size?
Inserting an image to an Excel workbook increases the file size by the stored size of the image. This is true, even if you crop and resize the image in Excel. That’s because Excel stores the original image. Test results: The file size of a 9 KB Excel workbook with one empty sheet increased to 170 KB when I Inserted a 159 KB image.
How to increase the size of Excel XSLX file?
In effect the XSLX file format will always be larger than the XLSB. To save a file in binary format go to FILEclick on Save Asand select Excel Binary Workbook (*.xlsb) as shown below. Remove Used Cell Range A troublesome thing that can increase your Excel file size is Used Range. Imagine the worksheet below.