small GIF massively increases excel file size
 

When I add a gif file to an excel workbook using the shapes.addpicture
method the file size increases massively from 55kb to over 1mb for a
15k Gif file! I am using the office 10 object model. I think that the
addpicture method must be converting the embedded file to a bitmap to
store the file. This didn't occur with previous methods like
Worksheet.Pictures.Insert but they don't seem to be accessible in
office 10. Is there any way to avoid this ? I include the code that
I use to attach the gif file below.

oSheet = CType(m_oExcelWrkbk.ActiveSheet, Excel.Worksheet)
oCell = CType(oSheet.Cells(m_oPosition.Y, m_oPosition.X),
Excel.Range)
oCell.Select()

' pick a cell that is far away to avoid difficulties with
resized columns
oCell = CType(oSheet.Cells(65535, 200), Excel.Range)
iExcelCellSpan = 15
lngWidth = CType(oCell.Width, Single) * iExcelCellSpan
lngHeight = CType(CType(oCell.Width, Single) *
iExcelCellSpan * (4 / 9), Single) ' aspect ratio

Filename = utilities.GetLocalPathFromURL(Filename)

oShape = oSheet.Shapes.AddPicture(Filename,
Microsoft.Office.Core.MsoTriState.msoFalse,
Microsoft.Office.Core.MsoTriState.msoCTrue, 0, CType(oCell.Height,
Single) * m_oPosition.Y, lngWidth, lngHeight)


oShape.Placement = Excel.XlPlacement.xlFreeFloating



As an alternative I have thought of using the shapes.addoleobject as
but this just seems to throw an excel exception

oSheet.Shapes.AddOLEObject("giffile", Filename,
Microsoft.Office.Core.MsoTriState.msoFalse,
Microsoft.Office.Core.MsoTriState.msoFalse, , , , 0,
CType(oCell.Height, Single) * m_oPosition.Y, lngWidth, lngHeight)

any ideas on either of the above would be greatly appreciated.