Microsoft Excel
Remove File Bloat &
Avoid Printing Blank Pages

Is your Excel file painfully slow to open and/or work with?  Or perhaps Excel insists on printing a blank page even though there isn't one?

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When you save a workbook, Excel only stores the part of that worksheet that contains data or formatting. Problems can arise when Excel thinks empty cells still contain data or formatting even if they no longer do. As a result, the file size is much larger than necessary. It may also result in printing of blank pages when you print a worksheet.

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To avoid this, locate the last used cell according to Excel, and then reset that cell. Here is how:

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Step 1. Locate the last cell used by holding down Ctrl + End. If this cell falls far beyond your actual used range, you have a problem. No worries, though, as this can easily be resolved by continuing with the steps below. You may want to check your file size before performing the steps below to compare it to the size afterwards.

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Step 2. Reset the last cell by selecting the column to the right of the last column used, holding down Ctrl + Shift + Right Arrow and then clicking the Clear button on the Home tab > Editing group and selecting Clear All. Repeat for rows by selecting the row under the last row that contains data, holding down Ctrl + Shift + Arrow Down and again clicking the Clear All option.

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Step 3. Close the file, making sure to keep the changes. Re-open the file and re-check the last cell used with Ctrl + End. The file size often will decrease quite dramatically as well, so check that.

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Step 4. If the file is still slow to open and the file size has not decreased significantly, click the File tab > Save As and select Excel Binary Workbook as the file type. This is a compressed file type that can contain macros. Other than decreasing the file size and increasing the speed, you will notice no difference between a binary file and regular Excel workbook file. Check the file size again. Most of the time, this will decrease significantly.