James

What Excel thinks is the used range on a worksheet can increase over time with
cells being added to then cleared, not deleted.

To reset the used range on a sheet you can delete all unused columns and rows
then save the workbook.

To do many sheets at once would require a macro.

Debra Dalgleish has such code at her site.

http://www.contextures.on.ca/xlfaqApp.html#Unused

Note the caveat about "merged cells" and how to deal with them.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Mon, 18 Jun 2007 10:31:02 -0700, James C.
wrote:

Is there a way to compact an excel file (similar to compacting a database in
MS Access). I currently have an excel file that continues to get bigger even
though I have removed data from it. I have had this happen before and my
solution was to copy all of the contents to a new excel workbook and the size
was reduced dramatically.

This time however, I have too many sheets to do this.

Any thoughts?