We have a workbook containing 30 worksheets each with 15 columns and 60 rows
of data. I am not sure where it was originally created but its size is
approximately 5 mg.

Recently, working on similarly formatted workbook, users reported it was
extremely slow to load. The workbook size is about 25 mg.

I don't know which version was used or is used at the moment but I think
they are still using Excel 2000.

We tried eliminating borders, shading, and WordArt, to no avail. It is still
about 5 times the size of the original.

Any idea what can be causing the bloating?

TIA

Guy