cannot load excel file - "too many different cell formats" error s

[Guest]

When trying to load an excel file it will not allow me to open it and shows
the message in a separate window " too many different cell formats".
I am led to believe (after a bit of investigation) that the file is now too
large and needs to be slimmed down. This is fine, but I need to be able to
open it first! Is there a way to open this file?
Please help. This spreadsheet is important to me. Thank you.

 

[David McRitchie]

A page format is a combination of upper/lower/left/right border, font color, interior color,
number format. All the more reason to format large areas all at the same time instead
of individually. You will have to remove a format, then you run Leo Heuser's macro,
not the one in EE but one he posted later.
..
If you had searched the Excel newsgroups with the content of at least the first line from the
message you got you would probably have the solution yourself.

http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/slowresp.htm#formats

 

[Guest]

Thank you for your reply.
I cannot format anything because I cannot open the file!
How do I open the file to do this. It just shows "too many different cell
formats", ie will not open the file. How do I open it.
thank you. Your response would be appreciated.

 

[David McRitchie]

Goal to reduce the formatting:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=213904#kb3

Try opening a copy of the file in "Safe Mode" To start it in safe mode use the "/s" switch e.g.
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\excel.exe" /s

Try opening a copy of the file in a later version of Excel

Try eliminating a Font from Excel -- wouldn't know how to do this but
if Excel doesn't have the font it just might reduce the formatting;

Try opening a copy of the file with Open Office which requires (download sizes shown)i
OpenOffice from http://www.openoffice.org [49MB], and Java from http://www.sun.com [9MB] both are free
(this one is probably successful, but people are not reporting back how they succeeded)
Once open eliminate some formats, which will eliminate some formatting combinations as
described in mskb 213904

Tell us what you tried and what was successfull -- got it to work with that information is not
sufficient, you need to indicate exactly what worked when several possibilities are suggested.

Once successful in opening the file in Excel, run Leo's macro
see http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/slowresp.htm#formats
macro at
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=OxP9cgi1AHA.1572@tkmsftngp02