Excel 2003 Cell Comments causes large file size?

[Guest]

After inserting comments the file size has grown from 1.5 meg to over 45 meg.
There are approximately 7 worksheets.
Each Worksheet data range is about from 25 columns wide and 650 rows long.
Not all cells have a comment, but most of that range does.
That means that each worksheet contains less than 16,250 comments with data.
The entire workbook contains less than 113,750 comments with data.
Is there any reason why the file size of this document grows substantially?

 

[Jim Rech]

I don't know that many of us have the internal knowledge of Excel to fully
explain this file size growth. However it is true that cell comments are
very expensive in terms of memory and disk space. In a one worksheet
workbook with nothing but a brief comment in the range A1:Y650 it saved as
almost 5 megabytes in Excel 2003. I _think_ the reason the file grows so
most more than the size of the text in all the comments is that each comment
is a graphic object.

--
Jim
| After inserting comments the file size has grown from 1.5 meg to over 45
meg.
| There are approximately 7 worksheets.
| Each Worksheet data range is about from 25 columns wide and 650 rows long.
| Not all cells have a comment, but most of that range does.
| That means that each worksheet contains less than 16,250 comments with
data.
| The entire workbook contains less than 113,750 comments with data.
| Is there any reason why the file size of this document grows
substantially?
|

 

[Guest]

Jim, thank you for taking the time to reply back to my post.

However, I'm trying to find an example programmatically of why this might
occur. I understand that this could be a graphical reason of why the file
size becomes large, due to so many comments and that they are graphical, but
I'm curious as to why give the option to an end-user to have so many comments
on one spreadsheet without programmatically minimizing the overhead of the
file size?

You'd think that the graphical image, if they all had the same attributes
except the text contained within them wouldn't be redundantly stored? I
guess I'm just not understanding why add a feature like this when it could
potentially cause severe file bloating?

Is there a way to eliminate the file bloating?

Thanks,
ICE

 

[Jim Rech]

I guess I'm just not understanding why add a feature like this when it
You could ask the same thing about large spreadsheet grids. If someone
fills every cell he will end up with a very large file on disk. So why give
him the ability to do it? Well, because he wants to. It's a tool, you
decide how to use it.

You have to decide whether the benefit of cell comments is worth the drive
space.

Why do you need so many?

--
Jim
| Jim, thank you for taking the time to reply back to my post.
|
| However, I'm trying to find an example programmatically of why this might
| occur. I understand that this could be a graphical reason of why the file
| size becomes large, due to so many comments and that they are graphical,
but
| I'm curious as to why give the option to an end-user to have so many
comments
| on one spreadsheet without programmatically minimizing the overhead of the
| file size?
|
| You'd think that the graphical image, if they all had the same attributes
| except the text contained within them wouldn't be redundantly stored? I
| guess I'm just not understanding why add a feature like this when it could
| potentially cause severe file bloating?
|
| Is there a way to eliminate the file bloating?
|
| Thanks,
| ICE
|
| "Jim Rech" wrote:
|
| > I don't know that many of us have the internal knowledge of Excel to
fully
| > explain this file size growth. However it is true that cell comments
are
| > very expensive in terms of memory and disk space. In a one worksheet
| > workbook with nothing but a brief comment in the range A1:Y650 it saved
as
| > almost 5 megabytes in Excel 2003. I _think_ the reason the file grows
so
| > most more than the size of the text in all the comments is that each
comment
| > is a graphic object.
| >
| > --
| > Jim
| > | > | After inserting comments the file size has grown from 1.5 meg to over
45
| > meg.
| > | There are approximately 7 worksheets.
| > | Each Worksheet data range is about from 25 columns wide and 650 rows
long.
| > | Not all cells have a comment, but most of that range does.
| > | That means that each worksheet contains less than 16,250 comments with
| > data.
| > | The entire workbook contains less than 113,750 comments with data.
| > | Is there any reason why the file size of this document grows
| > substantially?
| > |
| >
| >
| >

 

[Guest]

It's an easy way to get 2 pieces of information into one cell, whereas, the
comment section shows a sampling overview of the data cell value when an
end-user would need additional information about the data.

e.g. -
Each "Data" cell contains a number and the comment on each cell also
contains a number, but the number on the comment is a sampling of the number
on the original cell value. In other words, if you had a survey and the
questions answered were the cell value and the comments were only showing you
the sampling size.