I'm having a very similar problem to the original poster. I am working with
Excel work books that have a number of embedded files in them. As such, we
are attempting to re-use the work books and cleaning out the data where
necessary. For example, I have a 100mb work book that contains all the
attachments which are embedded as objects. If I go into each Excel work
sheet and highlight the object and press delete, or cut, or Alt-E-D shortcut,
etc, it removes the link to the object. However, this has no impact on the
file size. Even though I have removed each and every object (and confirmed
with using F5 - Special - Objects) is gone, the file size remains 100mb.

As such, it is my understanding that Excel still has the file embedded,
though cannot be selected/deleted/removed/etc, and just the link to the
actual object. I further confirmed this by just copying/pasting the
necessary information into another Excel work book and the file size was very
small as it was limited to text.

Is there any way to delete/remove embedded objects completely so that file
sizes come down? There is absolutely no reason why an Excel file with just
text should be 100mb other than that it is somehow retaining the embedded
files which the user has removed. Please help!