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This wikiHow teaches you how to reduce the amount of storage a Microsoft Excel file uses by removing some formatting, compressing images and saving the file in a more efficient format.
Steps
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Open a Microsoft Excel file. Do so by double-clicking on the green and white app with an X , then clicking on File and Open... , and selecting the file.
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Click File .Advertisement
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Click Save As… .
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Type a file name.
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Click the "File Format:" drop-down.
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Click Excel Binary Workbook under "Specialty Formats." Files saved in this format are considerably smaller than standard .xls files.
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Click Save . The smaller Excel file will be saved on your computer.
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Open a Microsoft Excel file. Do so by double-clicking on the green and white app with an X , then clicking on File and Open... , and selecting the file.
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Select all empty rows. To do so, click on the first empty row number, then press and hold Ctrl + ⇧ Shift + ↓ (Windows) or ⌘ + ⇧ Shift + ↓ (Mac).
- The arrow keys are in the lower-right corner of most keyboards.
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Click on the Home tab (Windows) or Edit in the menu bar (Mac).
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Click Clear .
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Click Clear All (Windows) or Format (Mac). This clears unnecessary formatting from cells that are not being used.
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Select all empty columns. To do so, click on the first empty column letter, then press and hold Ctrl + ⇧ Shift + → (Windows) or ⌘ + ⇧ Shift + → (Mac).
- The arrow keys are in the lower-right corner of most keyboards.
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Click the Home tab (Windows) or Edit in the menu bar (Mac).
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Click Clear .
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Click Clear All (Windows) or Format (Mac). This clears unnecessary formatting from cells that are not being used.
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Open a Microsoft Excel file. Do so by double-clicking on the green and white app with an X , then clicking on File and Open... , and selecting the file.
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Click the Home tab at the top of the screen.
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Click Conditional Formatting . It's in the "Styles" part of the ribbon.
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Click Clear Rules .
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Click Clear Rules from Entire Sheet .
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Open a Microsoft Excel file. Do so by double-clicking on the green and white app with an X , then clicking on File and Open... , and selecting the file.
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Click the Home tab at the top of the screen.
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Click Find & Select . It's in the "Editing" part of the ribbon.
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Click Go To… .
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Click Special… .
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Click the Blanks radio button.
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Click OK . All the empty cells in the data set will be highlighted.
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Click Clear . It's the eraser icon.
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Click Clear All .
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Open a Microsoft Excel file. Do so by double-clicking on the green and white app with an X , then clicking on File and Open... , and selecting the file.
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Click Edit . It's in the menu bar at the top of the screen.
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Click Find .
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Click Go To… .
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Click Special… .
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Click the Blanks radio button.
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Click OK . All the empty cells in the data set will be highlighted.
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Click Edit in the menu bar.
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Click Clear .
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Click Format .
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Open a Microsoft Excel file. Do so by double-clicking on the green and white app with an X , then clicking on File and Open... , and selecting the file.
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Open the Compression dialog box. To do so:
- In Windows, click on an image, then click on the Format , tab and click on Compress in the toolbar.
- On Mac, click on File and then Reduce File Size… .
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Click the drop-down menu next to "Picture Quality. "
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Select a lower image resolution.
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Check "Delete cropped areas of pictures."
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Click All pictures in this file .
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Click OK . The images in the file have been compressed and extraneous image data has been deleted.
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Community Q&A
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QuestionMy Excel file contains many pivot tables and the tables often get corrupted because the files are so large. Is there anything I can do to remedy this?Community AnswerMake sure you are not saving the source data with the pivot table. Go to Pivot Table Options --> data tab --> uncheck "Save Source data with file." The pivot table will not update again without being refreshed because it needs to re-read the source data to refresh, but this will reduce the file size.
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QuestionWhen I try to enter an amount in a cell, it jumps to another cell, and nothing is added to either one. What could be causing this?Community AnswerThe first reason this could be happening is that you are using the Enter or Tab keys while trying to enter the data in a cell; don’t do that until you are done. There could also be some VBA code activating on the Change event. Finally, your workbook could be corrupted, in which case you would need to build a fresh copy.
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About This Article
Article Summary
X
1. Open the file.
2. Click the File
menu.
3. Click Save As
.
4. Click the “Save as type” or “Format” menu.
5. Select Excel Binary Workbook
.
6. Click Save
.
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Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 1,753,490 times.
Reader Success Stories
- "Your article helped tremendously, enabled me to reduce about 50 images size in Excel. My file size reduced from 33 MB to 424 KB in 2 seconds. I can email these spreadsheets now easily." ..." more
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"Your article helped tremendously, enabled me to reduce about 50 images size in Excel. My file size reduced from 33 MB to 424 KB in 2 seconds. I can email these spreadsheets now easily."
..."
more
"Saving as an Excel Binary Worksheet tremendously reduced the file size from 30KB to 13KB."
"Man! From 6 MB to just under 60 KB. The first trick worked like magic. Merci Beaucoup!"
"I have a 55 MB macro-enabled Excel. I saved it as binary, it became 12 MB."
"Thanks. File reduced drastically. Excellent help."
