Hey Luke,
Thanks for your help with this crazy “too many cell formats” problem. I followed your advise, and downloaded Open Office. I have to say that I like it better than excel, and I was able to recover my file. My question is, will I eventually encounter the same problems with too many cell formats, or can I format endlessly with Open Office?

John

Fixing url: http://sergeig888.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/msft-released-hot-fix-for-e xcel-2007-custom-styles-duplication/

@ tracy:
It does and even was getting worse before these fixes came out: http://sergeig888.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/msft-released-hot-fix-for-e xcel-2007-custom-styles-duplication/,/a>. Thank you

@ XLGeek:
does this problem stil exist if upgrade to excel 2007?

@ Marcus Lieder:
Marcus Lieder wrote:

@jStiene: THANK YOU!!!!
I tried everything, cleared all formats, opened in different excel versions, etc.
Perfect solution!

No problem. I believe every cell that has unique formatting counts for one format. For example, four aqua cells with a border around all, would be four formats. One for aqua and a top line, one for a right line, etc. One thing to look at in trying to shrink size is fonts. Have you used any unsual fonts? If you select all and set almost everything back to Arial 10 it will probably reduce formats.

@jStiene: THANK YOU!!!!
I tried everything, cleared all formats, opened in different excel versions, etc.
Perfect solution!

@ Karie: Hi Karie, I’d be happy to look at your file. You can add me as a contact or send me a private message on Windows Live on how to connect with you, so that we can get in touch. Excel 2003 has lower boundary for unique format combinations count (about 4000) than Excel 2007. Typically even in Excel 2003 that upper limit is “eaten up” by the huge number of bad styles when you downgrade 2007 file to 2003. I will definetly be able to tell you where the extra format count that gives you the “too many formats” message is coming from.

Dear XLGeek, I tried your utility, and downloaded Net3.5 as well. I ran my XL 2007 thru your tool, but it didn’t solve the problem. I saved the new 2007 to 2003 and emailed it to my user who has 2003. We still get the same error. I went back to 2007 and took out most of my merged cells, as this seemed to be the biggest hangup, but still got the same error. I’m exhausted of funds. Not sure what to do next?@ XLGeek:

I was desperate. Nearly lost weeks and weeks of work over several years. Before it crashed. i had no idea why as i didn’t know how many formats i had used and couldn’t not delete and formulas ( all of two) thankyou sooooo much
my managers should be okay now.
“Is there a course we are able to learn how to use open office?”
BYe for now
thankyou
joh

Word of caution: ActiveSheet.Copy will also move all custom styles from the source workbook to the destination. In case of Office 2007 custom system generated styles are the main reason for the file format related corruption and the “Too Many Cell Formats” message. In case of Excel 2003 it is also major contributor. You don’t want to bring custom styles into the new workbook – it defeats the purpose of the intended file clean up.

I got really positive feedback on my Excel Files cleaning tool so far: . If you are using Office 2007 OOXML formats don’t mess with manual copy/paste or VBA. I added file drag&drop driven by popular demand since last post. That was a request from a person that wanted to increase his file cleansing productivity!!! It is crazy how widespread this issue really is among the Excel file users.