How to reduce Excel file size?

Large Excel files can be slow to open or save, causing unnecessary delays. This tutorial provides practical steps to reduce Excel file size by removing unnecessary formatting, formulas, pictures, and other elements that may be inflating the file size.

1 Remove conditional formatting

2 Remove useless formulas

3 Clear data formatting

4 Compress pictures

5 Delete watches

6 Clear invisible characters

Conditional Formatting is handy to highlight some specific data based on some rules, but at the same time, it will make your Excel file heavy. For reducing the size of the Excel file, you can remove the conditional formatting from the necessary cells.

Select the cells you do not need the conditional formatting anymore.

Click Home tab > Conditional Formatting > Clear Rules > Clear Rules from Selected Cells.

If you do not need conditional formatting in the sheet anymore, choose Clear Rules from Entire Sheet.

Sometimes, after you use formulas to combine data, extract text, or achieve other goals, you may forget to remove them, which can take up space.

1. Select the formula cells which you no longer need the formula, and press Ctrl + C to copy them.

2. Then select the original position of these selected cells, right-click to show the context menu, and select Paste Special > Values in Paste Values section.

Now the formulas have been removed and leave only values.

Cell formatting also weighs your file down.

Select the cells which do not contain data, and go to Home > Clear (in Editing group) > Clear Formats.

Tip: If you have Kutools for Excel installed, you can use the Clear Characters Formatting feature to quickly clear all formatting of the characters in selected cells.

Pictures take up a lot of space in Excel files. If you want to reduce the size of an Excel file, compressing pictures will be a good method.

Note: The sharpness of the pictures will be changed if compress pictures.

1. Select a picture. Then the Picture Format tab is displayed, click it and then click Compress Pictures.

2. In Compress Pictures dialog:

If there are many formulas and sheets, you can check if there are some watches added in Watch Window which also can make file heavy.

1. Click Formulas > Watch Window.

2. In the Watch Window, select the watches you do not need anymore, and click Delete Watch.

In an Excel file, there may be some invisible characters such as line break, non-breaking space, and trailing space which also occupy the space of the file.

Here we can use the Find and Replace feature to quickly replace the invisible characters with nothing.

To replace non-breaking spaces with nothing:

For removing line breaks, hold Alt key and press 010 in Find what textbox.

For removing trailing spaces or extra spaces, you can use the Kutools for Excel’s Remove Space feature which can remove leading/trailing/extra/all spaces as you need.
 

Learn how to use the Remove Spaces feature in Kutools for Excel by checking out our detailed tutorial.