5 Best Techniques to Reduce Excel File Size

Sometimes, the size of your excel worksheet becomes too large. And it takes too much time to open, save or share these large-size files. Hence, it’s very important to Decrease Microsoft Excel File Size.

If your excel sheet becomes oversized and you want to know how to reduce Excel file size, then keep reading this article.

Here, you’ll get different techniques to successfully reduce MS excel file size.

How To Reduce the File Size of Excel Spreadsheet

Here are some of the best techniques how to reduce excel file size. You may choose any of the below-listed solutions or you can try all of them.

Technique #1: Delete or Clear the Blank Excel Cells

You might have observed that, after completing your tasks in the Excel workbook, too many unused cells are left there that no more have been used.

But, sometimes, you mistakenly do formatting within these blank cells that can increase your excel file size. Thus, removing the formatting of these unused cells can reduce the file size.

Follow the below-directed process to know how to delete the unused cells from your excel workbook:

If you need to select all the unused cells then simply press CTRL+Shift+ ↓+ → altogether. This arrow sign indicates where you like to put the command.

Once the blank cells are selected, go to the Home tab >Clear option & then simply press the clear all option. That’s it! Now, all the blank cells will be removed from your excel workbook.

You may also choose another way to delete the blank cells in your Excel workbook:

Go to the Home tab and choose Find & Select then > Go To Special. Now, a box will open. In this box, you need to tick on the Blanks & hit OK. 

Doing this will find the blank areas automatically in the Excel workbook and delete the cells.

Technique #2: Compress the size of the Excel File

Compressing your essential document into a zip file can reduce the size of your excel files up to 10% to 15%. However, this technique will not speed up your worksheet, but the sharing work becomes easier & faster for you.

Here’s how to compress the file size in Excel:

Firstly, you need to make a right-tap on your excel file, then choose the ‘Compressed (zipped) folder’ which is under “Send to” opt. That’s it now; your files will be compressed.

Technique #3: Remove the Cell Formatting

Whenever you create an Excel file, you apply much formatting to the spreadsheet. Therefore, deleting the file formatting will surely help you to know how to reduce excel file size and boost your spreadsheet performance.

Follow these steps to know how to remove the cell formatting:

First of all, you need to choose a range upon which you wish to clear out the formatting.

• After that, go to the Home Tab then -> Editing Group
• Now, tap on Clear & then Clear Formats

Technique #4: Convert the Spreadsheet into Binary Format (.xlsb)

You can simply reduce your excel file size by converting it into binary format rather than the default format. The binary format always saves tour files to the smaller size.

Step 1: At first, you need to open your file tab.

Step 2: After that, make tap on Save As option.

Step 3: Here, you need to type your file name.

Step 4: Now, when you’ll be asked to save the file, you have to click on the drop-down arrow & choose the excel Binary Workbook.

Step 5: Finally, hit the Save option to save your file on your pc.

Technique #5: Compress the Image Size Of Excel

Sometimes, the excel worksheets become in large size because of the pictures present in it. If you have an image in your Excel file and you want to reduce its size of it, then follow out the below-given steps:

• Begin with selecting the image you need to compress.
• After that, move to the tab Picture Tools Format, which appears once when you tap on the image.
• Now, a dialog box will appear, where you need to deselect the ‘Apply only to this picture’ option & choose ‘Delete cropped areas of pictures.’
• Again, choose Email (96 PPI) for the maximum compression and hot OK.
• Finally, you can save your file, & all the pictures will be compressed.

Conclusion

Well, it’s really difficult to handle larger size excel files. Thus, it is important to compress the excel file size. To make your task easier, I have stated some of the easy and effective ways to reduce excel file size.

You need to check out all the given techniques one by one and find which one helps you to decrease the size of your excel file.

I hope you liked this post…!