Saving Excel 2007 file in 2003 creates very large file

[Jon Pearce]

When saving Excel 2007 workbooks in the Excel 2003 format, they will
frequently expand significantly. Recently a 9 mb Excel 2007 file expanded to
more than 52 mb when saved as an Excel 2003 file. The only research that
I've been able to locate on this topic discusses "thememanager.xlm" that gets
included in the 2003 file and greatly expands its size.

Does anyone have any ideas about this, and specifically about how to prevent
it? We frequently need to convert files back to 2003 format for our clients,
and it's problematic when they grow this big.

Thanks.

 

[Squeaky]

I prefer to look at it as my 2007 files are significantly smaller than the
older 2003 files. Even my older 2000 files save smaller when converted to the
2007 format. I don't think there is a way to avoid this.

 

[Jon]

Excel 2007 files are significantly smaller than the equivalent file created
in Excel 2003. However, when a file originating in Excel 2007 is saved in
the 2003 format it's often significantly larger than if it had been created
in 2003.