19 sheets and 2600 line macro suddenly jumped from 700k to 29Mb and now takes forever to load - please help

There’s virtually no data on any of the sheets (still in development) and little in-cell formulae - most done within the macro. All working fine, small footprint. Done some sheet tidying up - cell widths etc, saved (which took about 4 minutes!) and the file size jumped from about 700k to over 29Mb. Copied the file (another 4 minutes) and thought I’d try and find where the issue was by deleting sheets - impossible to delete - no protection and have set the default in the context menu, but Delete icon missing and greyed out in the main Sheet menu. Consequently I don’t know what next to do. Please help. The macro still seems fine btw.

Does it load, if you try to open while running LibreOffice in Safe Mode?

Maybe you have modified cell’s format in a lot of them, so no data but needs to be saved.

Sorry guys, just noticed your comments. I’m new to this site and it doesn’t show that there are comments in my opening page, just says zero answers, so I haven’t opened the post until today.

Opaque, you say does it load in Safe Mode - well I’ve fixed it now (see my new post), but to be truthful - I didn’t know there was a safe mode (new to Libre), but I’ll bear it in mind if I have issues in the future, thanks.

M.A.Riosv, one thing I did do (without thinking and quickly undid it) was select a column and pasted a formula. Realised it was copying the formula into a gazillion cells. It was shortly after this (couple of hours maybe) that the file size issue crept in - so perhaps that was where the issue was - caused some sort of corruption, maybe left loads of pointers open or something - the issue didn’t copy over in the new copy bit-by-bit version (see latest post).

Just thought I’d bring everyone up to speed with this. I’ve “fixed” the problem by starting a new file and copy/pasting everything over, bit by bit. Took a whole morning to do, but it done the trick - file size 700k. The original somehow got corrupted.

Whenever things like this happen, I suspect “Microsoft context”.

  • Did you save as Excel file (xls/xlsx)?
  • Has the file been edited in Excel?
  • Has anything been copied from an Excel file and pasted into your file?

The dreaded “cascading styles” bug used to create hundreds of cell styles, which would be impossible to scroll through (“cycling back” for some reason, so you could never find the styles you needed). I think (hope) that this bug is gone now, but the combination of added formatting and Excel/Calc context transitions will still make some mess of things.

As long as the file is now in working order, I guess you don’t need to answer the above questions. Still useful to be aware of, should the issue reappear.

Hi Keme, none of the project has any Microsoft involvement. It’s all “pure” Libre. Having seen the number of issues resulting from Excel/Calc porting in the forums, I’m glad it is. It’s all resolved now (I hope for good), but thanks for your input.