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The xlsgen style reduction tool for Microsoft® Excel® analyzes and processes Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheets in order to fix the hardcoded limit of formatting styles per spreadsheet, several thousands. If you use formatting intensively, then you have probably bumped on this blocking "too many different cell formats" error :
The style reduction tool does two things. It removes duplicates in existing formatting styles. And, alternatively, it performs a drastic compression of similar formatting styles. By arbitrarily reducing the number of formatting styles and, you can freely work with those spreadsheets again. Note : if you are using a French version of Excel, the corresponding error message is : "Nombre de formats de cellule différents trop élevé".
System requirements
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An example of style reduction is provided in the installed package. File example.xls has 4037 formatting styles and thus if you open it in Microsoft® Excel®, click on cell Adam county and try to make it italic, you'll get an error message. In other words, it is virtually impossible to edit this spreadsheet. File example_removedduplicates.xls is a processed instance of that file in which 568 duplicate formatting styles have been removed. The style reduction tool lets you know, from any Microsoft® Excel® 97 / 2000 / XP / 2003 spreadsheet, how many formatting styles are stored (4037), and how much of these are duplicates (568). Of course, duplicate formatting styles are unnecessary and can be removed, except that Microsoft® Excel® does not let you do that. File example_compressedsimilar_20.xls is a processed instance where instead of simply removing duplicates, we want to go further and compress 20% of similar formatting styles. This makes a lot more room and we end up with only 3234 formatting styles. With file example_compressedsimilar_50.xls we go even further and compress 50% of similar formatting styles to end up with only 2053 styles. Note that compression can be up to 95%. The more compressed the spreadsheet is, the more destructive is the processing in regards to the original formatting. If you are using the trial version, the tool performs only a fraction of formatting style reduction. To get the full work done, a license must be purchased. It's important to understand that, by default, the work is done on local copies of the Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheets you provide. This lets you try options as much as you'd like to (for instance, different levels of compression) without making changes to your actual spreadsheets. After the product is installed, a new group of programs is created in your Windows® Start menu. Simply click on it, and the style reduction tool starts. You can process either a single file or an entire folder of Microsoft® Excel® files at once. Simply click on File... or Folder... accordingly. Note that the option Work on local copies is checked, meaning that processing will occur on local copies of your spreadsheets, not directly on these. Below that option is the working folder where those processed spreadsheets will reside. Step 1 : simply click the Analyze button, this analyzes the corresponding Microsoft® Excel® file, or entire folder and produces a quick report below that after a short while. This listing tells, for each file, how many formatting styles there are, and how many of these are duplicate formatting styles. Step 2, remove duplicates : if there are duplicate formatting styles, then you probably want to remove these. Just click on Remove Duplicates in order to process all of the files. Note that, if you are running a trial version, the duplicate formatting styles removal is only partial. After the files are processed, you get a message telling how many of these were processed, and then you can individually view those processed files by either double-clicking on these on the list, or right-clicking and choose the appropriate option :
Note that, if the Work on local copies option is checked, which is the case unless you change it, you'll be able to view either the original spreadsheet, or the processed spreadsheet, alternatively. Whereas if the option is unchecked, the processing does really occur on the original spreadsheet, and thus you can only see the processed spreadsheet. Or Step 2, compress similars : if you'd rather go beyond the simple removal of duplicate formatting styles, you can really ask the tool to do a compression of similar formatting styles. When you click Compress similars, the tool uses the compression level (5% by default) in order to decide how to group similar formatting styles. The higher the compression level, the more drastic the processing and you'll end up with fewer formatting styles. Just like the simple removal of duplicate formatting styles, as soon as the processing is finished, you get a message with how many of the files were processed, and you can then right-click on any file to view the processed or original spreadsheet. If you'd like to retain a processed spreadsheet, just right-click on it and choose Open working folder, then it should be easy to take the file from the explorer window that opens. If you are unhappy about the result, and you were working with the Work on local copies option checked, then you can always click on Analyze again, and proceed from there.
Purchase a license
Because the trial version is such that the tool will only do a fraction of its work, you probably want to purchase a license. The price of the license is $49.90 USD. Just click the Purchase button on the top-right corner of the user interface, then proceed. Plimus is a payment processing partner which does online payment processing. You can purchase a license of the xlsgen style reduction tool from the product order page, which will return a registration number. Just enter this registration number in the registration box and restart the product. If you are properly registered, the purchase button should go away and you should see registered license instead. If you are having troubles, you can contact ARsT Design at The license is an end-user license. It does not include right to redistribution, leasing, ownership transfer in any form or fashion.
History
About
The xlsgen style reduction tool is a product from ARsT Design, an independent software developer. ARsT Design can be contacted at the above email address. ARsT Design also sells the xlsgen diff tool, to visualize differences between Excel files.  xlsgen diff tool
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This tool can be found in the Office marketplace here. If you think it solves your problem, please vote for it. |
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