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PsymoniousFlag for Switzerland

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Excel format options that make performance problems after converting xls to xlsx

Hi Experts

We have some old XLS (2003)  files that were converted into XLSX (2007). Some of them have only a few cells with less functions but extreme performance problems. Have a look at the file and copy the A1/G23 area and paste it somewhere within the file. If I do this twice, it takes about 1 GB RAM for the copy...the file is 23 KB!

If I delete all formats, it works as fast as it should. It takes about 2 minutes to delete all formats..unbelievable! If I save the file as an XML and resave that XML as an XLSX, it's again as fast as it should! So there have to be a format option that could not be converted correctly. There have to be a big overload within the formating options. If I delete the background, reset the font to default, remove all borders, set the align and vertical-align to default and format the cells as Standard, the problem still consists! What kinda formating option could cause such problems?

We are running Win 7 32 Bit with Core2Duo (2.53 GHz) and 4  GB Ram. That's obviously not the problem. It's also not an option to convert all files to xml and back. We have a lot files with macros and other "complex" stuff. I'm searching for the formating options that are causing such performance  problems. A better workaround than saving as XML and back would also be great..but, there should be no possible loss as it is by saving as XML!

Thanks in advance

PS: It's the same in Office 2010. And...the converted files are already in use, so we cannot use the old xls files as base.
testfile.xlsx
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Rory Archibald
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Thanks Rory, it seems that I was blind.
How did you count the rules, have you any tool to analyze the excel files?
I had a quick look in the dialog, saw there were a lot, and wrote some code to count them. It's most commonly either that or invisible shapes that seem to have these sorts of effects, but invisible shapes tend to make the file size larger, so I started with the CF.