I work on an extremely complex business model which contains many cell
formats. Although difficult to envisage I have reached the limit of
approximately 4,000 different formatting combinations for a single workbook.
I have read the Microsoft article ID 213904 and understand their solution is
to simplify the formatting. Has anyone found a work around for this as the
formatting is quite critical to the model?

One thought - you may have more formats then you're actually using. One
example is if you need to see 10 decimal places in a particular cell. If you
use the button on top of excel to expand the decimal places from, lets say, 4
to 10, the formatting in custom number formats will add a new format for each
step along the way, i.e 0.0000, 0.00000, 0.000000, 0.0000000, etc. So one
check you can do is to go into custom formats and remove those that you dont
actually need. It might be difficult in a large spreadsheet to determine
which formats are not needed.

Also, you might want to consider storing some of your information in another
spreadsheet but linked, then you should be able to eliminate more of them.
hth,
Dave

"Ms MIS" wrote:

I work on an extremely complex business model which contains many cell
formats. Although difficult to envisage I have reached the limit of
approximately 4,000 different formatting combinations for a single workbook.
I have read the Microsoft article ID 213904 and understand their solution is
to simplify the formatting. Has anyone found a work around for this as the
formatting is quite critical to the model?

Thanks Dave I was unaware that the cell formatts could tot up so easily. I
will examine this further and attempt to reduce my existing formats. As the
model is so complex the linked workbooks can sometimes create problems. Thank
you for your advice.

"Dave Breitenbach" wrote:

One thought - you may have more formats then you're actually using. One
example is if you need to see 10 decimal places in a particular cell. If you
use the button on top of excel to expand the decimal places from, lets say, 4
to 10, the formatting in custom number formats will add a new format for each
step along the way, i.e 0.0000, 0.00000, 0.000000, 0.0000000, etc. So one
check you can do is to go into custom formats and remove those that you dont
actually need. It might be difficult in a large spreadsheet to determine
which formats are not needed.

Also, you might want to consider storing some of your information in another
spreadsheet but linked, then you should be able to eliminate more of them.
hth,
Dave

"Ms MIS" wrote:

I work on an extremely complex business model which contains many cell
formats. Although difficult to envisage I have reached the limit of
approximately 4,000 different formatting combinations for a single workbook.
I have read the Microsoft article ID 213904 and understand their solution is
to simplify the formatting. Has anyone found a work around for this as the
formatting is quite critical to the model?

Dana,

I tried Microsoft's "Cleaner" but it didn't help. I have the same problem,
my spreadsheet has
grown over time and I'm bumping up against the 4000 cell format limit. Have
you found
any ways around it?

Jim Allen


"Dana DeLouis" wrote:

Has anyone used the "Microsoft Excel Excess Formatting Cleaner Add-in" ??

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

If you use it, please let us know how it worked. :)

HTH
Dana DeLouis



"Frank Kabel" wrote in message
...
Hi
for dealing with too many cell formats have a look at the following KB
article
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;213904

--
Regards
Frank Kabel
Frankfurt, Germany

"wsdanalyst" schrieb im
Newsbeitrag ...
I have a set of spreadsheets that I am unable to change the format of
any
cells. When I try to change the background color, font or font size,
an
error message pops up saying there are too many cell formats. I
really want
to avoid having to re-create all of these spreadsheets. Please help.
Thank
you.

Assuming the MS Cleaner works (I haven't tried it), this seems to be a
hardcoded limit, in which case there's no way around it. You'll have to remove
some formats.

On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 16:18:49 -0800, jimhallen
wrote:

Dana,

I tried Microsoft's "Cleaner" but it didn't help. I have the same problem,
my spreadsheet has
grown over time and I'm bumping up against the 4000 cell format limit. Have
you found
any ways around it?

Jim Allen


"Dana DeLouis" wrote:

Has anyone used the "Microsoft Excel Excess Formatting Cleaner Add-in" ??


http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

If you use it, please let us know how it worked. :)

HTH
Dana DeLouis



"Frank Kabel" wrote in message
...
Hi
for dealing with too many cell formats have a look at the following KB
article
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;213904

--
Regards
Frank Kabel
Frankfurt, Germany

"wsdanalyst" schrieb im
Newsbeitrag ...
I have a set of spreadsheets that I am unable to change the format of
any
cells. When I try to change the background color, font or font size,
an
error message pops up saying there are too many cell formats. I
really want
to avoid having to re-create all of these spreadsheets. Please help.
Thank
you.

Maybe you'd like to check out these 2 previous posts by Leo Heuser, where he
provides 2 VBA subs to deal with it.

Sub DeleteUnusedStyles()
http://tinyurl.com/mmrd

Sub DeleteUnusedCustomNumberFormat*s()
[version 1.01]
http://tinyurl.com/37vz7

--
Rgds
Max
xl 97
---
GMT+8, 1° 22' N 103° 45' E
xdemechanik <atyahoo<dotcom
----
"jimhallen" wrote in message
...
Dana,

I tried Microsoft's "Cleaner" but it didn't help. I have the same
problem,
my spreadsheet has
grown over time and I'm bumping up against the 4000 cell format limit.
Have
you found
any ways around it?

Jim Allen