error message: Too many different cell formats.
 

I wanted to ask if I have an excel file with multiple sheets and this error
message comes up is it ok if I take the sheet I was trying to do work on,
send it to a new excel file "eg. book1" and then work on it? And if I do
this can I put the sheet worked on back into the excel file i took it out of
without getting that message?
--
Vince Hill

Here is a Microsoft Knowledge Base article about that:
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;213904

This happens in large spreadsheets that are format-intensive. Excel
can keep track of about 4000 different combinations of formats; beyond
that you get the error message. I have corrected this in large
workbooks by deleting unused sheets and by going to infrequently used
(but mission critical) tabs within the sheet and setting them to a
neutral format: no font color, no background color, no
left/center/right alignment, no patterns, no boxes.

Some info:

XL: Error Message: Too Many Different Cell Formats
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=213904

A few people have posted that they could open the file in OpenOffice, then
remove some of the formatting, save it and then excel would open that file ok.

http://www.openoffice.org, a 60-65 meg download or a CD


=========
But I would think your suggestion would depend on how many different formats are
in the workbook and how many different formats are on that sheet. (you won't
know until you try.)

Vinceburg wrote:

I wanted to ask if I have an excel file with multiple sheets and this error
message comes up is it ok if I take the sheet I was trying to do work on,
send it to a new excel file "eg. book1" and then work on it? And if I do
this can I put the sheet worked on back into the excel file i took it out of
without getting that message?
--
Vince Hill

--

Dave Peterson

error message: Too many different cell formats.
 

Dave,
Is there any other way to increase the 4K number?

"Dave O" wrote:

Here is a Microsoft Knowledge Base article about that:
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;213904

This happens in large spreadsheets that are format-intensive. Excel
can keep track of about 4000 different combinations of formats; beyond
that you get the error message. I have corrected this in large
workbooks by deleting unused sheets and by going to infrequently used
(but mission critical) tabs within the sheet and setting them to a
neutral format: no font color, no background color, no
left/center/right alignment, no patterns, no boxes.