excel97 and workbook keeps increasing

Sorry to hear the problem is back. After further research, I found a KB article that addresses this problem. Type the following in the address box of Internet Explorer:

MSKB Q123269

They talk about Lotus/Excel conversions, but there are a couple of interesting references.
One is a download of a cleaner. It's at:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/excel97win/Utility/1/WIN98/EN-US/Xsclean.exe

(no spaces in the URL.

Also in that article, at the bottom of the page, is some code to clean up the spreadsheets. The code is called "ClearExcessRowsAndColumns"
It will have to be run on each sheet, but it seems to work fine.
Good luck

Some problems may arise when painting areas (blocks) for printing manulally or through a macro. The problem is when you select more rows and colums than the one that were "touched". Each time a cell is included into a range, it becames "active". Thesame happens when selecting a range by painting on the column headers (A, B, C, etc)
Try avoiding this commands (and macros).
There's a combinations of keys, in order to find the lastest cell active.
Open a blank .xls go to (e.g.) F-26 and fill it with any value.
Go to A-1, and press CTRL+END, it will take you to the lates touch cell in the file.
Now, select (paint) a wide & large range, say AZ-296 and select (e.g.) formating / general.
Go again to A1 and find the last cell.
You can testhow the size afer every change.
Good luck
and

MS KB Article ID: Q166092

XL97: File Size Increases After Launching Visual Basic Editor
SYMPTOMS
In Microsoft Excel, the size of a workbook may increase after you save it if the following conditions are true:

You start the Visual Basic Editor while you are editing the workbook.

-or-

The Visual Basic Editor is running when you open the workbook.

CAUSE
When you start the Visual Basic Editor, Microsoft Excel creates a Visual Basic module sheet for each worksheet and chart sheet in the workbook. The size of the workbook increases by approximately 1,000 to 1,500 bytes for each worksheet and chart sheet in the workbook.

WORKAROUND
To work around this behavior, use the following appropriate method.If Your Workbook Does Not Contain Any Visual Basic Modules or UserForms
You can reduce the size of your file by following these steps:
If the workbook is currently open, save the workbook, then close it.

Close the Visual Basic Editor if itis running.

Open the workbook.

Save the workbook.

The size of your workbook will be reduced by approximately 1,000 to 1,500 bytes for each worksheet and chart sheet that it contains.
If Your Workbook Contains Visual Basic Modulesor UserForms
If you are using Visual Basic modules or UserForms in your workbook, then you can reduce the size of your file by deleting any unused worksheets. To delete an unused worksheet, follow these steps:
Activate the worksheet by clicking on its sheet tab.

On the Edit menu, click Delete Sheet and click OK.

When you save your workbook, the size of the workbook will be reduced by approximately 1,000 to 1,500 bytes for each unused worksheet that you delete.

regards,
Leopold