If you are looking for a way to compress Excel files to reduce their file size, this post is worth reading. Here, MiniTool PDF Editor will provide a detailed guide to help you do that successfully.

What Makes Your Excel File Size Too Big?

Excel files are a useful file format that can help you dispose of data. However, you may find your Excel file size suddenly too large after you have added all the needed data to it. Do you know what makes your Excel file too big?

There are many factors that may affect the Excel file size. Here are some of the most possible reasons:

  • You have added many pieces of data in one Excel file.
  • You have added too many hyperlinks to one Excel file.
  • You have added too many images/pictures/logos to your Excel file.
  • You have made too many formatting changes to one Excel file, such as cell styles, conditional formatting, and merged cells.
  • Your Excel file contains too many hidden or unnecessary worksheets, rows, or columns containing excessive data.
  • Your Excel file’s Pivot tables are linked to a cache of data.
  • Your Excel file may contain complex and lengthy formulas or unnecessary formulas.
  • …

All the above factors can increase your Excel file size.

Why Compress Excel Files?

Sharing Excel files with others is very necessary for most industries, so decreasing the Excel file size should be a consensus.  If the file size is too large, you may experience a long load time when opening the file or be unable to attach the file to an email.

From the above content, we can know that the more worksheets, data, and formulas in an Excel file, the bigger the file size. So, if you have done all the ways below to reduce the Excel file size but do not reach your need, you can try compressing the Excel file to decrease the Excel file size.

  • Remove unnecessary worksheets, data, and formulas
  • Remove formatting
  • Delete/clear blank bells in Excel
  • Remove Pivot Cache
  • Compress the images in Excel

How to Compress Excel Files on Windows Computer?

How to compress Excel Files? A professional Excel compression tool like MiniTool PDF Editor can just decrease the Excel file size but not change the included contents. In addition, it can also help you compress Word, compress PPT, compress images, and compress PDF.

With MiniTool PDF Editor, you can also do many conversions between various file formats, like converting PDF to PDF/A, converting PDF to Word, converting PDF to PPT, converting PDF to Image, and so on.

In addition, it can also help you do many editing works on PDF files, such as adding/removing text, links, images, pages, stamps, signatures, headers and footers, etc.

Step 1. Click the Download button below to get the installation package of MiniTool PDF Editor, and then follow the on-screen instructions to install the program on your PC.

Tips:
MiniTool PDF Editor has a 7-day free trial from the day you install it on your PC. You can use all the features during this period. Once the trial has expired, you can still use some of its features. To know more details, you can refer to the MiniTool PDF Editor Comparison.

MiniTool PDF EditorClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 2. Launch into its main interface and click the Compress PDF feature. Just as the picture shows.

click on Compress PDF

Step 3. In the pop-up window, click the More Features on the left bottom.

click More Feature

Step 4. Then you can see six categories of features in the features window. Here, you need to select the Other Features category in the second line.

select Other Features in the second line

Step 5. Go to the Compress Excel tab, and click Add Files to open the file explorer window. Then select the target Excel file in the window and click the Open button.

Tips:
You can also drag the target Excel file that you want to compress to the blank space of the floating window. This can also add the Excel file to the compressed list.
add the target Excel file to the compressing list

Step 6. Set the Compression Level by selecting the level number from the drop-down menu and clicking the three-dot icon next to Output Path to choose a location to save the compressed Excel file. Next, click the Start button.

Tips:
Tip: When the compression level is increased, the compression speed slows but the compressed file size decreases.
click the Start button

Step 7. Once the compressing process is done, you can also click on the Open directory icon next to Output Path or under Option to view the file.

go to the compressed Excel file location

Are you bothered by how to reduce Excel size? If you have this need, you can read this post to get a detailed guide.Click to Tweet

Wrapping Things up

This post focuses on how to compress Excel size on Windows or online. Do you have other opinions about the compression? If you have, please to share them with us in the following comment area. Besides, if you have any questions when using MiniTool PDF Editor, please feel free to contact us via [email protected]. We will get back to you as soon as possible.

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About The Author

Charlotte
Charlotte

Position: Columnist

Charlotte is a columnist who loves to help others solve errors in computer use. She is good at data recovery and disk & partition management, which includes copying partitions, formatting partitions, etc. Her articles are simple and easy to understand, so even people who know little about computers can understand. In her spare time, she likes reading books, listening to music, playing badminton, etc.