Does Excel have compacting utility?

[K. Georgiadis]

Does Excel have a utility to compact the size of a file,
similar to MS Access, so that it occupies the minimum
possible amount of disk space?

 

[Norman Harker]

Hi K.

No! In fact some might say it has a facility to do the reverse.

You might look at:

Debra Dalgleish:
http://contextures.com/xlfaqApp.html#Unused

And

Charles Williams:
http://www.decisionmodels.com/optspeedd.htm

 

[David McRitchie]

Also Rob Bovey's VBA Code Cleaner
http://www.appspro.com/utilities/utilities.htm

For transporting, of course, you can zip the file with
and PKZIP like program, the following remains free only for home use:
http://www.ultimatezip.com

But Excel keeps a lot of garbage in unused areas, and
I don't know that anything that gets rid of that -- things like
remnants from another file. Assuming that it still does.
Finding your friends names, addresses and phone numbers
in a file that they were never a part of is not the best situation.
It is/was obviously reserving storage in an ill conceived manner.

 

[Harlan Grove]

...
...

But Excel keeps a lot of garbage in unused areas, and
I don't know that anything that gets rid of that -- things like
remnants from another file. Assuming that it still does.
Finding your friends names, addresses and phone numbers
in a file that they were never a part of is not the best situation.
It is/was obviously reserving storage in an ill conceived manner.

...

I don't have a url, but I recall reading that Microsoft had released tools that
would cleanse document files of hidden information. Maybe that only applied to
Word .DOC files, but I believe there was also something for .XLS files.

 

[Dave Peterson]

I search the mskb and found this for xl2002 and xl2003:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=834427
The Remove Hidden Data add-in for Office 2003 and Office XP

And in xl2002:
tools|options|Security tab|
You can check the "Remove Personal Information from This File on Save" button.

I didn't see anything for earlier versions, but didn't look too long.