Procedure to reduce the size of Excel files

Just wondering how to reduce the size of Excel files, frustrated with ever increasing excel file size without any idea, tried creating new copies still of no use. Well even I was a victim of this ever increasing file size in excel. After a lot of trial and error method and some technical analysis, I tried to put the steps in order so that it would be helpful for everyone.

Follow the below steps to reduce the size of excel files -

1. Before starting the procedure take a backup of the file
2. Unhide all sheets
3. Select all unused / blank columns and go to Edit>Clear>All
4. Select all unused / blank rows and go to Edit>Clear>All
5. Repeat the steps 2 & 3 for all the sheets
6. Save the file and close it and now check the file size, it would have reduce considerably.

The above steps work, believe me I have tested the same and after following the steps the file size reduced from 90 MB straight down to 5 MB !!!

Also some excel sheets would have a very small scroll bar irrespective of the contents of the sheet

Steps to correct the scrollbar issue –

Find the last used row and then select all the cells below this till end of the column

Select Edit > Delete and select Entire Row

Now Save the excel file and then reopen it

Now the scrollbar would turn out to be of normal length

Hope this works and the file size would be reduced thereby saving time to open the file and also save the disk space.

Thanks for reading this article J