Jim,

I don't think you can. The way I understand it is this. When you do
formatting to a cell, Excel internally creates a thing called a style, that
contains all the formatting called for in that cell. If you use the same
formatting in another cell, it uses that same style. In your case, it has
run out of styles it can create. If you can use the same formatting
combinations in some of the currently formatted styles, you may be able to
economize on styles. Also, be sure to remove any rows/columns beyond your
used cells you're not really using, in case they're using up styles. I think
www.contextures.com has the procedure for that
--
Earl Kiosterud
mvpearl omitthisword at verizon period net
-------------------------------------------

"Jim Allen" <Jim wrote in message
...
My company uses very large spreadsheets
to confrom to goverment requirements. Recently we have run into a Warning
message when we try to insert a new column. It says we've used up all the
cell formats, so we can't add any new cells. The Microsoft documentation
seems to indicate that the maximum number of cell formats is 4000.

I guess we're hitting that limit and Excel won't let us enter anymore
data.

How do I increase the max number of cell formats?
How do I find out how many I've used already?
How do I delete ones I'm not using (Excel seems to "hang on" to all the
cell
formats we've ever generated)?

Thanks.

Jim Allen