Richard There are a number of causes for a file being larger than what it should be. The most common of these is where Excel thinks the last cell in the used range is not what you think it should be. Let me give you an example. Open a new blank file. Type something in A1. Select say F10. Do Ctrl - End. Excel will move the cursor (active cell) to A1. This means that Excel thinks A1 is the last cell of the used range. And that agrees with you. Now select F10 (or any other cell) and type something into that cell. Now do Ctrl - End. Excel jumps to that cell. Again that is right. Now delete the entry in that cell. Now do Ctrl - End. The active cell is what Excel thinks is the last cell of the used range. You know it should be A1. The file is now bigger than it should be. Add hundreds of columns and thousands of rows to what you just did and the file can get big in a hurry. Look at each sheet in your file and find what you know to be the last cell of your data. Then do Ctrl - End and see what Excel thinks is the last used cell. If you feel industrious, you might figure out the number of cells involved here. Your data may take 1000 cells while Excel thinks it's 50,000 cells. If this appears to be your problem, you will need to delete all the rows and columns after your data. Here's how you do that. Let's say your actual last cell is J500. Click on the row number 501. Click on the row number, not just some cell in row 501. Do Ctrl - Shift - down arrow. This selects every row from row 501 to the last row in the sheet. Put the mouse cursor in the selected range and right-click. Click on Delete. All the selected rows are deleted and replaced by blank rows. Now click on the column letter K. Do Ctrl - Shift - Right arrow. Put the mouse cursor in the selected range and right-click. Click on Delete. Save the file. If you have more sheets in your file than you want to do this with, post back. There is code available to automate all this. HTH Otto "Richard" <Richard[ at ]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:1B956CB0-FABD-475B-BC8A-74EC09A8BBFE[ at ]microsoft.com...
[Quoted Text] >I have a problem, I have a 18 sheets, all of which are linked via an ODBC >to > SQL to pull in data, I thought that this was a good idea, now that it's > done, > my file is 42 MG, any suggestions on how to shrink it while leaving the > links? > > I have a work around, just dont' want to lose my mornings work. > > Richard
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