The style reduction tool for Microsoft® Excel® analyzes and processes Excel spreadsheets in order to fix the hardcoded limit of formatting styles per spreadsheet, several thousands.
If you use formatting a lot, you have probably faced this blocking "too many cell formats" error :
Excel can only store a limited number of formatting styles, hence the "too many different cell formats" error
The style reduction tool removes duplicates in existing formatting styles and can perform a drastic compression of similar formatting styles. By arbitrarily reducing the number of formatting styles you can freely work with those spreadsheets again.
NEW! Slow Excel spreadsheets are made a lot faster by automatically removing orphan objects that Excel creates when you are using spreadsheets. Those orphan objects grow arbitrarily over time and can make Excel very hard to operate : very slow to navigate cells and sheets ; very slow to open : very slow to save. This is a new algorithm in the style reduction tool and is an addition to the main style reduction process.
Also NEW! Some large files which have stopped working in Excel because they are too large can work again thanks to the tool automatically diagnosing and fixing key internal elements.
Excel lack of available resources is an example of error making such file a good candidate for the style reduction tool. The exact error message in Excel is "Excel cannot complete this task with available resources. Choose less data or close other applications".
Also NEW! Some files are seen by Excel as unreadable content :
Excel found unreadable content with corrupt drawings. According to the error message, Excel was able to open the file by repairing or removing the unreadable content but in most cases the drawings (charts, pictures, vector shapes, ...) are lost. Our tool fixes drawings without deleting them, unlike Excel.
The style reduction tool analyzes and fixes blocking and non-blocking problems in Microsoft® Excel® :
"too many different cell formats" error : the style reduction tool removes duplicates in existing formatting styles and can perform a drastic compression of similar formatting styles. By arbitrarily reducing the number of formatting styles you can freely work with those spreadsheets again.
orphan object reduction : slow Excel spreadsheets are made a lot faster by automatically removing orphan objects that Excel creates when you are using spreadsheets.
"Excel cannot complete this task with available resources" error
"Excel ran out of resources while attempting to calculate one or more formulas." error
"Excel found unreadable content" error
Defective drawings, tables
The style reduction tool does this by processing any Excel file and creating a new one. This is a piece of software that runs on Windows and must be downloaded to run.
The user interface of the style reduction tool.
System requirements
The product works with Microsoft® Windows® 7 / 8.x / 10.
Once downloaded, double-click on xlsstylereduction.exe file to start it. There is no install step.
If you are getting the "Windows protected your PC : Windows SmartScreen prevented an unrecognized app from starting" message with a blue background, click on More Info and then on Run anyway. The reason why this message appears is that Microsoft blocks applications by default for no other reason that they are new or have been recently updated.
Bypassing Windows default application blocker, click on More Info then Run anyway.
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.
Step 1 : Click the File or Folder button for selecting one or more Excel files to process.
Step 2 : then simply click the Analyze button, this analyzes the Excel file(s) and produces a quick report. This listing tells, for each file, how many different formatting styles there are, and how many of these are duplicates.
Step 3, 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 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 :
Processing results
Open processed workbook in Excel : this opens the file once it is processed. You can open the original and processed files in Excel and view them side by side, compare them (in Excel, click on Windows in the menu bar and select the Arrange... option.
Open original workbook in Excel : this reopens the original file.
Open working folder : this opens an explorer window where you can grab the file once it is processed. Note that the file is prefixed with Processed. If the original file is called myfile.xls, then the processed file is called Processed.myfile.xls
Compression level : this option is used if you are interested in reducing more than the regular reduction algorithm. Pick your compression rate and click Enable compression.
Reduce duplicate name styles (XLSX) : checked by default. This option reduces styles in known named styles. Usually this fixes a known bug in Excel where, by merely using it, a number of named styles are duplicated.
Reduce other formatting objects : checked by default. Patent algorithm. Speeds up file opening time by reducing duplicates in conditional formattings, also a known bug in Excel.
Advanced reduction : checked by default. Patent algorithm. Speeds up working in Excel when the file is opened by removing unneeded rows, etc.
Process defective drawings : checked by default. This fixes anchors in drawings when they are swapped one another, or not visible.
Reduce large tables : checked by default. This reduces unecessary large tables by the number of wrong columns that Excel sees. This help speed up the file opening time.
Remove slowness in calculations : unchecked by default. Removes what triggers the "Excel ran out of resources while attempting to calculate one or more formulas. As a result, these formulas cannot be evaluated." error message. When fixed, calculations are left intact.
Unhide defined names, unprotect sheets, unhide columns and rows : unchecked by default. This unhides everything that is hidden, intentionally or not.
Just click the Purchase button on the top-right corner of the user interface, then proceed. Placing a purchase order will return a registration number by email. 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.
The license is an end-user license. It does not include right to redistribution, leasing, ownership transfer in any form or fashion.
Jan 19, 2014 - major extension to the style reduction tool for fixing slow Excel spreadsheets.
Nov 7, 2014 - major extension to the style reduction tool for fixing large Excel files causing blocking errors in Excel (such as the lack of available resources).
Apr 23, 2015 - a new orphan object category is now part of the algorithm, helping speed up spreadsheets and reduce their sizes without losing any content or formulas. Check out the Unused column after the spreadsheet is analyzed.
Oct 6, 2015 - introduction of the 64-bit edition for processing large spreadsheets.
Jan 18, 2016 - support for password-protected Excel spreadsheets. To use this feature, add the password in the Options dialog.
June 25, 2016 - support for all XLS encryption algorithms.
Oct 10, 2016 - support for fixing defective drawings (unreadable content scenario).
Feb 2, 2017 - support for reducing very large tables causing slow spreadsheets. This feature is only available with a recent product license.
July 17, 2017 - the style reduction tool now informs the user whenever it encounters Excel files with at least one invalid external reference (square brackets in filenames).
Sept 2, 2017 - Unicode support all throughout code and user interface to avoid problems with alternate codepages (Chinese, ...)
Sept 5, 2017 - support for fixing invalid strings in any corrupt Excel file.
October 21, 2019 - options to unhide defined names, unprotect worksheets, unhide columns, rows as well as other objects.
October 19, 2021 - user interface change : file details after analysis are displayed vertically rather than on columns.
November 1, 2021 - Slow calculations property is introduced to help detect and fix such problems in files, causing open and calculation slowness in Excel, and even an "Excel ran out of resources while attempting to calculate one or more formulas. As a result, these formulas cannot be evaluated." error message at some point.
November 11, 2021 - Defective drawings property is made visible, an additional category of defective drawings is processed.
September 29, 2022 - Another category of useless cells is now identified and processed, removing large chunks of bloat wherever applicable.
April 2, 2023 - Strict ISO 29500 files are supported.
May 27, 2023 - conflicts in names are found and fixed.
Current working folder cannot be used to write processed files. To change it, click on Options and change the corresponding option.
80030005
Access denied. Most likely, current working folder cannot be used to write processed files. To change it, click on Options and change the corresponding option.
80030020
The processed file is already opened in Excel. To avoid this error message, close it.
80072000
The input file was last saved using a version of Excel prior Excel 97. To avoid this error message, open the file in a more recent version of Excel and save it.
80072001
The input file is password protected. To avoid this error message, pass the password in the style reduction tool options, or unprotect the file in Excel before you submit to the tool again.
00000000
The tool crashed. Send our technical support a copy of the input file by email.
The 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 other products include :
