Windows 10 (also Windows 8 and 8.1):
Free XLStylesTool for Windows 8 or later versions in the Windows App Store.
New option for Windows 10: by user demand WinForms UI version with support for file drag and drop is available in the store: XLStylesTool .Net Core3.0. Read more about this release here. Release post describes one easy way how you can get this app for free by using Microsoft Rewards.
Documentation:
Refer to the XLStylesTool user comminity contributed information and Windows 7 legacy app how to video.
Windows 7 only:
.Net4.0 version is uploaded here: XLCleanerDotNET4.0.
Web Browser Application Option:
If you are using a Mac, don’t want to or can’t download .Net, don’t have time to setup SkyDrive, use browser based Silverlight version of the XLStylesTool.
Background:
Unlike other tools, MS Excel add-ins or VBA macros that deal with excessive styles that rely on MS Excel object model, XLStylesTool uses Office Open XML file format based deep cleaning algorithm (patent protected). This means that it works 100+ times faster and is the ONLY option that can get rid of hidden and built-in corrupted styles inaccessible to other tools. XLStyles Tool is very light weight app that doesn’t consume any of MS Excel application resources unlike the add-ins that slow down session startup time and sit in memory regardless of whether you are actively using them.
Legacy Windows 7 app .Net Framework requirements:
About 20% of all users that downloaded the original XLStylesTool to date also clicked on .Net3.5 Client Profile download link provided in one of the comments. .Net3.5 Client Profile runtime is necessary to run the application. The download size is ~255MB. Compare it to the .Net4.0 Client Profile download size which is only 41MB. I recompiled XLStylesTool against .Net4.0 and if you don’t have .Net3.5 on your machine yet it makes sense to go with the smaller .Net4.0 Client Profile Download.
Please Leave Comments:
Same ask as before: please leave comments if you used the utilities. All application features, optimizations and new utilities downloadable from this blog are the result of the user community feedback starting with the original post. User comments and content contributions make this project more valuable to the worldwide user community.
XLGeek's space 
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Hey! I’m trying to use your utility on a workbook that I broke yesterday afternoon! We have a very large workbook with cells formatted a million different ways, apparently. When I moved some sheets from another workbook into this one, my formatting disappeared. When I try to run your utility, I see a message that says “File contains corrupted data” next to the Process File button. Do you know a way to fix this? Or work around it? I’ve been googling my fingers off, and trying many different things. Your utility sounds like my best option, if I can get it to work.
Hi Teresa, there may be couple of reasons for this behavior:
a) the file is not in OpenXML format: i.e., it has *.xls (old binary format) or *.xlsb extension. You can do “Save as” *.xlsx or *.xlsm (if file contains macros) to address this.
b) the file has password to open it. In this case document part that contains format definition is encrypted, so the tool can’t read it. You can temporarily remove the password to open the file. Read-only password is OK.
c) one or more of the document parts are corrupted. This can only be determined by disassembling the file which I can help with. Sometimes it is possible to fix this by tweaking part contents by hand.
If none of the suggestions above work for you I would be more than happy to look at your file. You can reply to this comment with your contact e-mail (I won’t approve it, so no one will see it) and I will send you my e-mail address to send over your file. You can delete all numeric data from it.
Thank you for writing me back so soon!
It is an .xls file. I opened it and saved it as an .xlsx, ran the utility, and then checked the file. The formatting is still missing. When I check Cell Styles, I still see all the individual styles that have been added.
No password, so that’s not an issue. I did notice that when I saved the file as an .xlsx, the size dropped from over 2,000 KB to only 371 KB. I realize that the .xlsx format uses less space, but this appears to be a bigger drop than is typical.
Please make sure you check “Commit changes and open in Excel” checkbox and click “Process File” button again.
Your utility works beautifully for us. I want to thank you for creating it, and for putting comments about it out there on so many tech blogs so that I could find it!
I work in an environment that is a mix of Office 2007, 2003, and 2000. So even though I and my most immediate coworkers are using Office 2007, we have to save our Excel files at a lower version in order to share them with the rest of our department and the organization. We are also currently in the middle of a major system upgrade that will affect every department, so we are currently creating and sharing much larger workbooks than we have in the past. This has created a “perfect storm”, in which the limits of Excel have caused files to crash, and formatting to be lost. The file crash which sent me to your blog involved a workbook that we have been using and updating for well over a year now. By the time it crashed, there were more than 9,000 different cell format styles. I believe that the problem had been building up for a while, because your utility shows me that a previous version of the file from late February has 1434 different styles. The most insidious part of this is that Excel will act like everything is perfectly fine and normal when you save and close. No error messages, and nothing to indicate that anything is wrong. The problem comes when you try to reopen the file. And so you don’t know that you are in trouble, until you are really in trouble. It’s sneaky that way!
I had the opportunity to use your utility again this morning. A coworker had a very small, simple (but important!) workbook crash on her just this morning, all because she copied and pasted a small amount of data from another workbook where the styles had gotten out of control. Luckily, she came to someone who was involved with troubleshooting my particular file crash, and so the problem eventually came to my attention and I was able to help her.
I’m going to alert the rest of my coworkers about this problem and the solution. And I’ll also get in touch with our network engineers about the possibility of running your batch utility on our network, so that we won’t have to worry about this issue any more. Thanks again, XLGeek! Keep up the good work!
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Thank you so much for the tool! It is true life saver!
About 4 years ago my company all got dual monitors, and everyone found that opening Excel files in separate processes would allow them to have different files on different windows. Thanks to me (and yes, I regret it…) I found that I could modify the file type advanced properties by adding a %1 and un-checking use DDE would force all files to open in their own process. Everyone loved this… It took about a year before we started noticing that some xls files would lose all formatting.
Our fix at the time was to migrated to Excel 2007! But, within 6 more months even those started to have issues… It was at this time that I found out about styles corruption! We learned that if you take a corrupt Excel file and copy a single cell (even an empty one) and then paste into another Excel file (even a brand new one) ALL corrupt formatting would transfer over! Now, this only seemed to happen when the files were open in separate processes. If both files were open in the same window/process the copy/paste would be quick and no corruption would occur. But when in separate processes a simple copy/paste could take 10-20 seconds while it copied over 600kb, 60,000 extra styles. Insane!
For the past 2 years or so I have used ASAP Utilities for their capability of cleaning extra styles; however, in the past 6 months I realized two things.
1. It took a very long time on large Excel files.
2. It missed some styles…. By looking at the xl\styles.xml file, I could see some styles were being completely missed! These styles had weird attributes “Hidden=1” and “CustomBuiltIn=1.” From here I tried to create my own style cleaner in VB.Net, and found that nothing that I used could even see these nodes with those specific attributes.
So the next step was to look into XML parsing and doing this myself… Something that I was on my way to doing but always ran into issues. Different Excel developer forums had never heard of this issue – one person going as far as saying that if I had 40,000 styles I set some sort of record!
I had all but given up when I found this site by accident the other day. This tool is not only amazing at finding all styles, it does so extremely quickly. Something that would take ASAP Utilities 5+ minutes and all of my processor would take seconds using this utility… And the resulting file size was smaller!
Sergeig888, you are awesome to provide this utility free of charge to help reduce this seriously annoying problem. Your name will be praised in my department for saving us time, and preventing people from having to re-do work because of lost formatting.
Robert,
THANK YOU for your comment! I just had the “too many cell formats” error come back after starting a new file from scratch, thinking starting fresh would shed whatever relics were here from years past. I was so annoyed to get the error when I’d barely even started on my new workbook. I habitually open multiple instances in excel so I can see them across my monitors, and never thought anything about copy-pasting between them. Oh man this makes so much sense, thank you, you’ve saved me hours of grief.
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Hi,
We have a large, ~20 tab, Excel 2007 .xlsm file. Periodically, we have had a problem with cells randomly changing into dates. It happened again today, although the formatting change only affected headers this time. Finally did some research and discovered the problem with Excel Styles. (Which we’ve never knowingly used.) After running the utility, the file no longer shows any styles brought in from other spreadsheets. The utility did not fix the headers, although I reran the utility four or five times and I’m pretty sure I followed the instructions correctly. So I manually corrected the headers and reran the utility again. I’m hopeful that the file will stay uncorrupted this time. Thank you for making this available.
Hi Deanna, this behavior makes perfect sense: this app will remove unused styles as well as the style property associated with the cell if you choose “Force all cell styles to ‘Normal'” (<-highly recommended for best results and probably the best option for your situation). Cell formatting will not be altered at all. That is the objective of my app: get rid of bad styles, stabilize the file, but keep all formats intact. If at the time when you ran the utility the cell in question was formatted as date and had say "Date&Time" custom style applied to it then when the processing is done original cell formatting will remain, but the style property may be removed if you forced all to Normal. Please make sure you don't have any Excel add-ins installed. These usually are responsible for re-introducing bad styles back into the cleaned up workbooks and messing up cell formatting. Thank you very much for sharing your experience.
I have same issue but my file is passwod protected. How I can remove password to use your utility.
Thanks in advance
I mean to say vba code is protected. thanks.
Protected for viewing VBA project even if it is digitaly signed will not have any impact on how the utility works. As long as the file is in Open XML format (.xlsm since it has VBA) and the file is not password protected utility will process just the formatting part and won’t touch VBA part (or parts if your code is signed) at all. My utility will work only if your file is in Open XML format with .xlsx or .xlsm extension and is not password protected: password protection encrypts file contents which includes format definitions used for custom styles. All binary files: e.g., .xls or .xlsb also won’t work. I won’t be able to help you hack the password for obvious reasons. Utility will not be able to open password protected file or binary file. Hope you have an option to save the file off as .xlsm.
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I’ve run the utility on my file and get an Excel File Cleaner Error message: “Unrecoverable Styles Corruption”
Any ideas? It is an xlsx file and it is not password protected.
Unfortunately your file has reached the maximum limit of custom styles count on the last save and now is fully corrupted. I hope you have a recent backup.
This is a great utility you created!! I had been tearing my hair in trying to fix this issue with a pretty large file that had a large number of styles being used and it kept crashing on me.
This works great! Like everyone else, this has been a problem for a long time, and we could never figure out how to clean it, and others we have seen cleaned down to the font formatting, and that did not work at all. This one was quick, easy, and brought the exact results expected. Thank you!
Is SkyDrive access a problem for some users? It is free for me to publish the tools and free for world wide users to download. Please leave a comment if you have issues. I’ll consider creating a mirror if it is a big deal. I saw someone creating a copy of the tool on some site in Asia last week. That is bad: that file will never get updated and the apps on this site get upgraded periodically.
Hi ,
I wnted help on resolving the issue with xls files.Please help.Currently all the formats are destroyed after opening the file.
Binary file formats: .xls and .xlsb are not supported. You need to upgrade to .xlsx to use the tool. See converting .xls files to .xlsx post.
The file is in xls format and is very important .If i open it,a command box opens with excel found unrecoverable contents in the file,do you want to recover the contents” and if I click yes,all the formats are deleted.Even if I convert the file to xlsx,the fromats are lost.
Please help.
I’m afraid your .xls file got completely corrupted on last save. Most likely last save was in Excel 2007. You definetely have corrupted styles problem.
Hello,
I tried to run XLStylesTool.exe to clean up format in my file, however I can’t run it. The error message is “To run this application, you first must install one of the following versions of the.NET Framework:v4.0.30319”. Anyone can help me with this please?
Hi Tio, the link to Microsoft .Net4.0 client profile download is available in the post above. The error message that you get means you have some version of .Net installed on your PC. If you are using Windows 7 you already have .Net3.5 and can use original version of the XLStylesTool without the need to install .Net4.0. I synced all features between the two apps. In rare cases .Net3.5 needs to be activated on Windows 7 (part of Windows features under Programs and Features in the Control Panel). You can also try browser version of the app. It will require very small Silverlight 5 run-time download and will produce the same results as WinForms app. Let me know if you need any further assitance.
Thanks for this great utility – is there any way to run this from a command line or in any kind of batch mode? I need to clean 2250 files!
Sorry – just found your other page with the console app – thankyou
Hi Steven, glad you found it. This ask came up a bunch of times from enterprise users. Last year I added updated version of the bulk cleaner with support for subfolders (make sure you get XLBulkCleanerSF.zip). I can’t imagine your files are in a single folder. Although I increased memory buffer size to its absolute maximum of 64K it may happen that at 2250 files you may overflow. Please pipe console output into a text file and analyze the list to make sure that some files didn’t get skipped. The relevant to your case feedback I got so far was from the user with 500+ files and at 64K buffer it wasn’t a problem: all files got processed. Let me and everyone on this thread know how it went for you. You are on the higher end and it is very interesting case. Thank you.
This program has been great for fixing a ‘viral’ excel problem with unused styles propagating as users copy and paste data around. I think I am seeing a bug with the XLBulkCleanerSF. When I open excel files it sees the ~$filename.xlsx and thinks for a minute or so and then says it failed to write to that file. If i point the XLBulkCleaner at the same folder it works and correctly cleans the file on close and ignores the ~$ temp file.
Thank you.
-Ed
Hi Ed,
Thanks for the follow up. This shouldn’t be happening: the codebase is the same except for the buffer size and support for tree vs. single folder scan. I suspect that you may have a file in one of the subfolders (could be hidden or system) that makes the SF version barf. Would love to follow up. Windows logs will have an entry for the crash with the stack trace. I’d appreciate if you can share. I can reach out offline for an e-mail follow up if that is OK with you.
Yes. Please email me and I will give you additional information about the issue I’m having.
Hello!!
You are the Man!!, I am more than grateful that I find this page, You save tons of hours of work with this application, Thanks for share the knowledge and share this useful tool…
Hello!
Thanks for sharing this. It seems it has worked for most of the people. Not for me. I arrived here because I am facing both Excel issues you described in your first post: “too many cell formats”, and “I can’t copy/paste cells from one workbook to another”. I downloaded your NET4.0 app and the .NET4.0 Client Profile using the links you provided and run the app in the two workbooks. I made sure to toggle on the four options, including “commit changes and open in Excel”. The files seem to be cleaned, yet they did not open after the app finished processing the files. At the end of each run, an Excel window popped up, but the file did not open. I open manually the files, save them again and tried to copy/paste from one file to the other, but the problem persists. Paste Special does not work at all, and “normal” (values) paste only works once. The next time I try to paste, destination cells are empty . Any idea on what is going on? Thanks!
Hi Mauricio, do you by any chance have Skype add-in installed: http://community.skype.com/t5/Windows/Skype-add-in-causes-issues-with-Excel/td-p/426765? If not, I would like to connect with you offline and look at the files that have a problem. Please reply with the Skype check. I will contact you directly if the problem is not related to skype.
Thank you for posting this valuable tool. I thought I was faced with rebuilding all corruputed files when I found this. Now hours of productivity have been given back to my company.
I love this! Saved me so much work. Thank you!
Excellent light-weight solution – Many Thanks
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Can someone please translate this article? Based on what I understood there is a push for VBA. Please stay away from VBA – it can’t access hidden styles and styles with low ids. You are better off with the Open XML based clean up.
Thank you very much! It worked prefectly
Hello – I just want to express my sincere thanks for your help. I have had issues with “too many cell formats” on an excel dump I was doing and I have consulted so many support people to try and figure this out. This tool solved it and couldn’t have been more stright forward. Again, thanks.
This was really usefull and fixed multple files for me.
Many thanks for posing
This tool is a god-send! I was running into limits on several spreadsheets, and I suspected it had something to do with copying things from other spreadsheets. But I didn’t want to re-create some very elaborate spreadsheets from scratch.
I stumbled across this utility, and it appears to have completely solved the problem.
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!
You made my Friday! This tool is awesome. Thank you for sharing.
Got my issues fixed in a jiffy! This tool is like an amazing find and You are nothing short of a BLESSING!
This works great! We have been dealing with this huge file with so many issues. There were days were I would 30 seconds before the file would respond after I hit enter. Also, copying and pasting was a nightmare.
One question though, I would like to understand if you are able to obtain any of the data that runs through this app.
Hi Kristy,
Thank you for the feedback. I don’t think I understand your question. Are you concerned with your data privacy? All versions of the XLStylesTool (even browser based) accessed or downloaded from the locations listed in my blog posts work on the client machine in memory and the memory is released as soon as scanning and processing are done. Not a single byte gets stored in the file system or is transmitted outside. Please see Privacy Policy for Windows 8 XLStyles Tool application in the related post. It applies to all versions of the tool. Or are you interested in leveraging my code or tool functionality in some other app? I already covered typical enterprise scenarios: e.g., console based version of this app actively monitors specified file share and automatically cleans up files saved on that share displaying appropriate stats.
I am concerned about privacy. I just wanted to ensure that this app doesn’t download my data.
I have been working on the file since I made the post earlier. It is not an understatement when I say this saved me hours of time.
I absolutely understand your concern and that is why there are detailed data privacy disclosures in the Silverlight and Windows 8 App version blog posts. Please be assured that your data is not transmitted anywhere by my app. Some people even asked if the tool was a virus. Seriously, would I put my name on a virus and would Microsoft include it in the KB article? As long as you download the apps from the links on my site you are getting official versions of the tool. Productivity wise the highest stat that I got from a user in Finance department was an estimate of 20 saved days per calendar year per person! They actually created a PowerPoint presentation to teach their team members on how to use the tool. These guys had a ton of old huge workbooks that they were upgrading to new versions of Excel for almost 15 years.
Works amazingly quick, and fixes one of the most annoying bugs in Excel…too many formats!
Thanks!
Hi,
We are using excel (.xls) files as test data files using HP-Quality Center in our Automation testing, but now a days when an excel is open from QC for any modifications we are getting “Too Many Different Cell formats” message popup and the change is not getting reflected back. According to Microsoft this is happening because of the Excel 2003, it supports only 4,000 different combinations of cell formats. As we are using many different files across different projects, so it is difficult to change/ upgrade the test data files (excel) from 2003 to 2007.
Will this ‘XLStylesTool’ helps us from this without any further problems?
XLStyles Tool will work only on .XLSX or .XLSM file. You can always bulk update .XLS files to .XLSX/.XLSM. There is a post in my blog with all necessary resources.
Awesome utility!!! Saved me big time.
Thanks….glad I found this tool. I was going crazy!
Fantastic, THANK YOU.
The utility worked great. Saved me a lot of time using work-arounds.
Thank you very much! It worked great! I also appreciate the fact that you are not charging people for this.
hey my exel error message says ‘ too many different sell format” how can i solve this?
hey, apologies…typo ….my exel error message says ‘ too many different CELL format” how can i solve this? thanks
What version of Excel are you using? If it is 2007 or newer XLStylesTool will fix your file. Have you tried using it?
microsoft office exel 2003… I dont know what happened , but after getting nowhere I tried using the backup copy of the spreadsheet & everything seems fine again , dont know if it will occur again …, will be good if you can let me know what to do if it does
P/s: Thanks a lot, XL Geek, I have never tried asking help this way before & I didn’t know if anyone will reply at all, like a mystery , dont know if you are half way across the globe or nearby…
Hi Celia, Microsoft Knowledge Base article explains what is causing this error in Excel 2003. Chances are your problem is caused by the excessive style count as well. I have seen spreadsheets that exceeded the 4,000 unique formats maximum limit primarily in test labs, and very few in the real world. Your backup copy most likely is close to the limit. If you have a friend with Excel 2007 that can help you save your workbook as xlsx or xlsm and clean it with my tool it would get you the best results.
thanks XL Geek, for the solution- I will follow yr instructions when it happens again. I have been copying whole worksheets over from another spreadsheet , so maybe that’s the reason. maybe deleting those copied worksheets will help? But thanks a lot …cannot thank you enough . Celia
Typically it is copy/paste action between two or more instances of Excel that causes this. Please keep lots of backups if you choose not to clean up your workbooks. If the workbook blows up there is no way to get the formatting back without a backup file.
thanks XL Geek, I will keep back ups and also try to clean, cleaning sounds more complicated. Celia
Hi XL Geek,
I am using Excel 2010 and I am getting the too many cell formats error. I’ve never seen this error. I don’t want to lose my formatting. What should I do? How do I use your tool? should I just run it?
It worked like a charm. Thanks for a great tool.
XLStylesTool saved me hours and hours of work. I can’t even thank you enough for your generosity!
I tried to reach you via Facebook to discuss possibility of making a localisation for this tool, but didn’t manage to. Could you please e-mail me on the matter to [edited for privacy] at gmail.com?
Thank you. Will e-mail in the morning US time.
Thank you Thank you Thank you for making this tool. It saved my butt on a deadline today…
Great tool. Thanks for posting!
The utility worked great!!!! I have been messing with this problem for weeks,. Finally discovered your utility. THANK YOU!!!!
Hi XLGeek,
I downloaded your utility based on a suggestion from a forum about the weird excel bug that randomly converts all columns to date format (http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2007-excel/excel-2007-spontaneously-formats-entire-work-book/1ae533af-ecee-41fa-866a-2590343a111d?page=2); I ran it on the file in question, but it didn’t help…Any ideas/advice? Much appreciated!
That means your issue is not related to corrupted styles, but something else. I can contact you via e-mail and look at your file. I may be able to spot what is wrong with it.
Thanks for your help! Can I email you the file?
Best regards,
Boban
________________________________
Sergei, I can’t thank you enough!!! I really appreciated your help, and I feel really empowered by the way you explained the solution to me! You knowledge is great and so is your kindness!
XL, Windows Live is blocked in my company, is there any other way I can get this tool?
Hi Erick, can you use Silverlight 5 version: http://xlgeekwebapps.cloudapp.net/default.aspx? If not I can e-mail the zip package to you if your company allows zip attachments.
The Silverlight link worked, thanks a lot, great tool!
Thanks for this! It saved a lot of my hairs! 🙂
Worked like a charm!
Just wanted to say thanks. My workbook was to the point of being unable to format any cells and opening/saving was taking forever. Your app cut the workbooks size in half and is fast. Thanks much.
A comment, as requested – It Worked! Apparently approx 55,000 Styles Max ID, 11 Style Node Count, size of file went down from a Mb to 600k. Not dramatic, but saved the file.
Thanks!
Petra
Thanks a lot for a wonderful tool. Saved a ton of time for me!!
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You saved the day!! Thank you so much. It worked great.
Our company only uses Windoes 7 – will this tool work? Thanks.
.Net 4.0 is a relatively small download if you don’t have it and it works on Windows 7. You can use Silverlight version if you want minimal install and automatic upgrades.
Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It worked lke a dream. Thank you so much!
I’m not a geek but wish I were, and the tool worked great! The how-to video and manual were very helpful. Thanks!
Thanks so much!!! Your tool works great, better than anything the million dollar IT department at work can suggest
HI XLGeek
We’re having some problems with the corrupted file issue here at work. Looks like everyone is raving about your application and Windows Support is even linking to it so I was hoping to get my hands on a copy. However, our company does not permit access to Live or Silverlight. Would it be possible for you to email me a copy to the email address below (would be great if you could keep that from going public)?
Any help is greatly appreciated!
Thanks and regards
Kim
Your e-mail is never exposed. I sent the files. Hope they work in your highly restricted environment.
Hi. I didn’t actually receive the files – I didn’t realise we’re that highly restriced. I’ve given my home email address. Can you please try sending through to there? Thanks again!
Just forwarded original message to the new address. Let me know if it works. What OS are you running?
Program received and looks to be working well on the files I’ve tested. Thanks so much. This is going to get rid of a whole lot of headaches! I’ll be sure to recommend to anyone else with the same problem.
Thanks from me, too! Some of my clients have files affected by this bug, and this is a g*dsend. Thanks again!
Just used your online tool. You saved my non-administrative-access, quarterly-statement-deadline-having tuchus.
Thank you.
Thank you for this tool it has been very helpful. Is there a way in code that that can be done in Visual Studios 2010?
I don’t quite understand your question. The main algorithm is patent protected. You have tools that support any client including MAC OS via Silverlight plus bulk file processing. Commercial use of the cleansing algorithm is not permitted.
Amazing! Thank you so much.
Thank you so much. This helped me – you are the best for providing this!
Hi XLGeek,
I was having formatting issues with excel. I ran your software and found I had around 52,000 styes. After converting the file to normal everything worked perfectly for a while. However, when I now copy and paste data into my spread sheet the style count returns to 52,000 and my spreadsheet now longer works. Every time I run my file through the XLCleaner tool the styles reverts back to 0 until I copy over a single cell then. Any idea how to stop the styles from changing?
Hi Debbie,
Your source file from which you are copying from has bad styles in it. Also, you are most likely copying between two separate Excel instances. Even a single cell in that case will bring in all bad styles. Clean up the source file and start copying inside the same Excel instance.
Thank you
Hallo und 1.000 Dank !
Ich habe ein umfangreiches Excel-Tool (noch in der xl2003-Version) beruflich im Einsatz mit denen
ich umfangreiche Auswertungen erzeuge.
Ca. alle 3 Monate werde ich ausgebremst durch die Limitierung bezgl. der Anzahl der Zellformate.
Bisher habe ich mittels VBA immer allen Programmcode und alle unformatierten Daten in den Blättern in eine neue Datei “gerettet”. Alles leider immer noch mit hohem manuellen Formatierungsaufwand verbunden.
Heute habe ich meine .xls-Datei mit xl2010 geöffnet, als .xlsm gespeichert, mit Ihrem Tool in Sekunden bereinigt und wieder als .xls gespeichert.
Ergebnis: Benutzte Zellformate drastisch reduziert, Funktion wieder hergestellt.
Nochmals 1.000 Dank – für mich ist das Tool die wichtigste Ergänzung seit Jahren.
Viel Grüße aus Wolfsburg
S.K.
Thank you, including English translation:
Hello, and 1000 thanks!
I have professionally in the usage with which an extensive Excel tool (still in xl2003-version)
I create extensive evaluations.
Approx. every 3 months I’m thwarted by the limitation for the number of cell formats.
So far I using VBA always all program code and all raw data into a new file in the “saved”. Everything unfortunately still with high manual formatting overhead associated.
Today I opened my .xls file with xl2010, .xlsm stored, adjusted in seconds using your tool and saved as .xls.
Result: Used cell formats drastically reduced function is restored.
Again 1000 thanks – for me it is the most important supplement for years.
Much greetings from Wolfsburg
S.K.
Worked to remove corrupted excel files. If you have the C:\WINNT35.. corrupted excel styles this fantastic free tool will do the trick. THANK YOU SO MUCH for making this – I was at wits end with a new model I have spent weeks on that I didn;t want to stay corrupted or redo everything just to get rid of 2 stupid styles. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
Dear Sergey, thank you SO much for creating this elegant application. Saved me 2 days of brain killing work. Take care, D.
Where do I find the orignal XLStylesTool for .NET3.5? I clicked on the link above for original tool and it took me to the .NET4.0 page
Hi Dan, the link works. The zip package name for the original .Net3.5 version is XLCleaner.
Thank you so much for sharing this Utility. It fixed what would have been a very large headache for me, and my team. We have battled this error for months, and recreating our data is time consuming and doesn’t always fix the issue. This utility fixed the problem, and kept us moving forward instead of retracing our steps on our project. Thank you!!!!!
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you a centillion times over.
Hi, I clicked on the link above and it does not work. It is possible that my company does not permit access to Live or Silverlight. Would it be possible for you to email me a copy. I have .Net4.0 Client. Window 7. Thanks
Sure. Will use your e-mail from this comment.
Thank you beaucoup…..for super fast reply. Recevied file and it works beautifully. VOW! Is it ok for me to foward the file to my co-workers?
Please try to distribute from my site if you can. I would like to know what the true demand is for this app and issue. The only things you can’t do is reverse engineer my code or use my tools commercially. The core algorithm is already protected by the US patent and EU patent is pending. Glad I could help.
Thank you for the utility..it saved me a lot of time!
I’m troubleshooting troublesome workbooks that are used with an Excel add-in that is part of an Oracle software application. I’d like to look at the hidden styles to know if they are the cause of the problems is the add-in. Things like the count of styles, the style names, values, creators, etc.
Can you give me a hint on how to do this?
What skillset do you have: are you comfortable with Excel OM, VBA, OpenXML? What types of files are you dealing with: OpenXML or binary? Is it ok to contact you via e-mail?
I’m very comfortable with the XL OM and VBA, lots of coding experience in the distant past, but almost none with OpenXML. The files are are binary, xlsb. I’m looking for where the Add-In stores app specific metadata, like connection properties, point of view members, etc., etc. I feel like if I could review that information, I can find out why some workbooks are “breaking”.
Yes, my email address is mcahren at gmail.
Thanks!
Thanks ! the tool really helped 🙂
Thanks very much for this tool. I just cleaned up a spreadhseet with 51454 Styles in it, of which 17 were being used. Took around 1.5 seconds to run. cheers form Australia
Really appreciate your comment. Always glad to help Australians. All my Australian friends are really good people. Your country’s semi-pro surfer Billy Watson made a huge difference in my life last year. He taught me how to breath properly after a wipeout in bigger waves in Fiji. Super cool guy and incredible surfer. He just helped me out of the goodness of his heart. Probably saved my life in the long run. What goes around comes around. Cheers.
Hi XLG
Thanks for an incredible tool – had a file with over 60k styles – 8 in use – a couple of seconds later a new clean file was saved – brilliant!
Microsoft said I should use you. ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/213904/en-US ). Considering the years of work that went into the 79 worksheet dating pre-Excel 2003, I was extremely nervous. The program has features, lets you choose, and is awesome. 63500 styles, 58 in use. 2K names, 1K unused. Bam! Cleaned, done, file size cut in half, errors gone, 10+ years of bloat gone in under 10 seconds. All data is intact, formatting is exact. Thank you so much.
Awesome. You should force all styles to Normal. It is particularly important for files that have been upgraded through multiple prior versions. There will be no loss in formatting, just a cleaner file.
Used your SilverLight version to clean up our loan screening template which is the core of our loan origination operation. We originate about $3 billion in loans a year. Your utility completely solved our cell formatting error problem in seconds. Outstanding. Why aren’t you charging for this software. It is brilliant. Thank you.
Great utility! This fixed my error lickity split! I never knew I had so many different formats in my workbook. I didn’t lose any functionality after applying fix, and I have tons of vlookups and pivots all over. Thanks very much for developing this, and keeping it free!
I tried but it does not work.
Next to the box, “Process File,” this “Excel File Cleanup Tool” shows “File contains computed data.”
The error message most likely says: “File contains corrupted data”, not “computed”. Please make sure that the file you are trying to process has .xlsx or .xlsm extension – Open XML format. You are most likely trying to process .xls or .xlsb file – a binary format. You can explicitly save your file as .xlsx or .xlsm and try again. If you try to use a file with wrong extension in the Silverlight app it will tell you right there and then that it is binary. The “How to” post and the enclosed with the utility readme file explain what file formats are supported.
It is .xlsm file. Please let me know how to resolve this issue.
Please send me the file. It is either not true OpenXML file or is fully corrupted. I’ll check it out. I just sent you an e-mail.
Please make sure your file is not password protected. File open password encrypts file parts making them look like gibberish to the tool and may very well be the cause of the error message that you see. The “how to” posts and enclosed with the tool ReadMe file explicitly call this condition out. Hope this helps to resolve your issue.
Per your advice, I removed my password before uploading my file to the tool. And then my issue is resolved. Thank you very much!
excelente!!!! muchisimas gracias por la herramienta tienes 5 estrellas de calificacion, pude arreglar mi archivo.
muchas gracias!.
This tool is awesome, cleaned up a messed workbook for me and saved my time.
Thanks a lot.
This worked wonderfully! Thanks so much!
I thought all was lost with my too many cell formats death message until I found and downloaded this tool when nothing else worked and it cleaned the file in 5 seconds flat. The best freeware ever!
Why is it saying that the service is unavailable when I attempt to download the file (XLCleanerDotNET4.0.zip)?
Looks like they are killing original SkyDrive links since MS is renaming it to OneDrive. Can you please try this and reply if it works for you:
https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=53E1D37F76F69444!900&authkey=!AH5oeGVaWlMsFHA&ithint=file%2c.zip? I will update if it does. Really appreciate the fact that you sent me a message.
Thank you for replying. There is service interruption due to the conversion of the SkyDrive to OneDrive by Microsoft. I checked and updated all links. I update my apps all the time to keep the algorithm current. My Silverlight version of the app is your safest alternative if something is down while Microsoft is finishing their conversion. If you are not downloading the tools from my site there is no guarantee that you are not getting a virus
in your download or getting the latest version. The alternate site that you provided in your reply is located in Moscow, Russia and looks very suspicious. I can’t approve your comment for obvious reasons. Downloading executables from weird looking servers located in Russia, China, Korea, etc… is extremely unsafe. I would be running Offline Windows Defender full scan option if I were you.OMG this tool is amazing, I am an bit of IT challenged person and I was struggling with files provided from an unknown source to me and was having a lot of issues trying to work with them, my job is going to become SO easy now. THANK YOU FOR THIS TOOL!!!
Got linked to your tool from Microsoft’s own website. Apparently they feel that using your tool is much simpler than actually programming a fix for it themselves… In any case, it worked great on several sheets that had massive style formatting issues (yay for users formatting styles to infinity…), so just wanted to say THANK YOU SO MUCH for creating this!! 🙂
Fantastic tool ! Thanks
Worked great for the accounting employee that was having trouble with an Excel file used month over month. Thanks much!
You’re awesome! Thanks so much for this.
Reduced file size to a third and removed those infuriating “too many formats” messages. It didn’t even change the appearance of any of the worksheets.
Great tool! Curious if you have had any luck scripting with it.
We have users who are experiencing the “excel cannot paste the data” issue (along with other excel related), the tool fixes the issue right away and they go on working. Only problem is…we cant anticipate what document they will need to run the tool on, and of course having to run it themselves is too much work.
We would like to try some sort of scripting with this tool. Possibly batch file or VBS that we can run on their Excel Data drive and cleanup all excel documents in one swoop. Have you had any luck or experience with this?
This ask has been covered in XLBulkCleaner related post. ReadMe file contains detailed instructions. Monitored share sounds like a perfect fit for what you are trying to do.
Any way for the bulk cleaner to clean all excel docs in sub folders as well?
Yes, if you read the update and comments to the BulkCleaner dedicated post you will see that I published subfolder version of the bulk cleaner. There are even stats, so that you can establish safe number of files benchmarks. Does the ReadMe make sense?
You sir, are awesome
Test run results are here: https://sergeig888.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/sharing-useful-utilities/#comment-183. They should help you benchmark what is safe and what may push the buffer limits when it comes to the number of files and folder. Please post what your experience was like. I’ll add/revise features time permitting.
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Thank you ever so much for this gift of an amazingly simple and effective tool. You’re a generous genius! I sent the corrupted file home to fix it because we cannot install unauthorized software on our workstations. I’ll turn to you in the future as well.
Just downloaded the apps. I have been suffering from this demon for months and I now have the solution. You’re doing great keep it up !!!!
I installed the Silverlight tool, but I don’t know how to access it so I can do the file clean up. Am I missing something?
You can’t install Silverlight app: it runs in the browser. What OS are you using and what exactly did you do?
Thank you so much for this utility program. I was getting mad trying to decipher the ultra techno solutions proposed by Microsoft guys and the lot. With your program just two clicks and problems solved.
Hi,
Just wanted to say a big thank you for posting this tool. It just saved me weeks of work! Very much appreciated from a tech world newbie.
Erin
Hello, I am trying to use the utility… but when I select the file it says ‘The process cannot access the file ‘Filepath”. WhenI try to access other files it works alright. Looks like something wrong with my file… but I dont know what to do. Can you please help. Thanks
All sorted. The file I was trying to process was already open… duh!!… it works beautifully… thanks a ton!!!
I can’t seem to get the xlstylestool to work for me. I’m using a 2009 MacBook Pro running OS-X 10.7.5. I’ve downloaded the XLCleaner and the XLCleanerDotNET4 from the OneDrive website. When I check if everything is installed properly, I get the message that I’m “…ready to use Microsoft Silverlight” and the version installed is Silverlight 5 (5.1.30317.0).
However, when I launch the tool from http://xlgeekwebapps.cloudapp.net/default.aspx, click on the “Get Excel File” button, and browse and select the file, the tool starts “scanning file” but never reaches the end of this process. Even after several minutes, it is still “scanning file”. I tried again using a very small file with the same result.
What am I doing wrong?
Dave Hills
Hi Dave, there have been 3 reasons for the behavior that you are describing: 1) file was already open in another program or was marked as read-only, 2) file was password protected, and 3) file size was extremely large – Silverlight has lower limit on the file sizes than normal 32 bit processes. Hope this info helps. If the root cause for the SL app spinning during the scan is different I would like to get a sample to dig in deeper.
Thanks for the prompt reply. I don’t think it’s any of the three causes you mentioned. The files are not open or password protected. I suspected it might be something to do with file size so I tested this. The file which suffers from the “too many formats” error is 21MB so I tried again with a file of only 55kb and had the same problem. How do I get a sample to you so you can investigate further?
I will send you an e-mail and we will take it from there.
thank you! worked liked a charm and very easily and quickly. much appreciated.
Thanks for the brilliant tool, saved me a LOT of work
Thank you very much for providing this utility. We work with ridiculously large excel files that are added to from a number of different sources and they get out of hand very quickly. Occasionally they have to be converted into an older Excel format. & that can be problematic. After going in & trying to reduce the number of cell formats by hand (unsuccessfully) I found this and it fixed the problem amazingly quickly and easily. Thanks again!!!
Very fast and very good, deleted 40,000 styles without any error in a second, did remain only 20 used styles. Thank you!!
Thank you for the comment. You should consider forcing all styles to normal. 20 remaining custom styles is actually a lot. You will not lose any formatting if you choose to force all styles to normal. You will get the cleanest copy of the workbook. Custom styles are not necessary for normal usage. You may need them in some edge cases when they are leveraged in code, but that it very rare. Most likely you don’t need them.
I installed the tool today, works like magic so far! Thank you very much.
THANK YOU SO MUCH for sharing this fabulous tool!!!!
good stuff, worked great for me.
I have used your XLStyles tool for years and am deeply in your debt. I however am currently finding myself SOL. At work, I run Windows 7 and Office 2007, and I have a file which just recently started giving me fits. It is a .xlsb file and it isn’t letting me save the file into .xlsx or .xlsm to use the checker. It is giving me the “one or more formulas is longer than 8192 character bit” and I cannot for the life of me save the file as either of those formats. I have tried different versions, different computers, different users, nothing. I am at my wits end, any ideas on what the heck I can do?
Hi Bryce, this can happen for many reasons. Sometimes paths of links to other workbooks explode in length, sometimes named ranges mis-behave, sometimes chart data series grow out of control. You can try looking into these three areas and if the file doesn’t get fixed, you can send it over to me if you want.
Hi there,
Trying to download but when I click on the link it just says that IE cannot display the page. Is this just me or is there an issue? Desperate to get this as I can barely do any work at the moment.
Unless your ISP explicitly blocks your access to Microsoft OneDrive or App Store there should be no issues: the services are up. If you still have issues let me know what OS you are on and I will e-mail you appropriate app. You can also try browser based Silverlight 5 version. Silverlight download is very small if you don’t have it. SL5 app link is in the original and SL5 app specific post.
Dear XL Geek
Can you please help me recover 2 important xls that have been corrupted after a scan & epair of pendisk? they are password protected. Will forward to you with the files by email if you’d kindly help.
Thank you in advance and with kindest regards, Sun
I won’t be able to help with binary or password protected files. Their internals are not accessible to my apps.
Even if I know the password to the files and I can forward to you to try? I have tried all methods online but I am not tech-equipped enough to understand half of what was suggested. Please help. thank you & regards, Sun
Can the files be opened? If not, it is file corruption. Even a single missing or extra byte in the encrypted file can make it completely unrecoverable. This has nothing to do with Excel, but rather the OS or external app like in your case corrupting the file. If you don’t have a backup you may be out of luck here. You may try disc recovery tools. Windows doesn’t really delete a file, so if the disk hasn’t been subjected to too many new writes you may get an older working version of the file.
Love this program for accuracy efficiency and ease of use. I had an experience where a bad style was propagated to MANY Excel files!
Excellent tool! thanks 🙂
I would like to use XLStylesTool utility. Is it possible to download it without using an MS account.
More specifically I do have a MS account but I do not want to associate my PC logon to my MS account. I have no need of the cloud and no other devices to link. I’m concerned that using a MS account to login (rather than a local account) will have effects on my PC that i do not want/need. If linking my local account to my MS account is essential to downloading the software then please point me to an article on the effects – and ability to disconnect – so i understand what i’m committing to.
If you are on Windows 7 or below you won’t have to login. If you are on Windows 8+ you have no choice but use your MS account. What issue exactly do you have with accessing what version of the app?
The link to download the program is no longer available. Could you resolve that? Thanks!
All links and sites are up. Which link exactly do you have a problem with: original winforms app, win 8.1 app store app, SL5 app?
It works now. I was referring to this link: https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=53e1d37f76f69444&id=53E1D37F76F69444%21900&ithint=file,.zip&authkey=!AH5oeGVaWlMsFHA
XLCleanerDotNET4.0. I needed it for Windows 7.
Thanks!
Sir, thank you very much for building this tool. A life saver!!!! It worked beautiful on a number of files I’ve been trying to clean up for some time now. Definitely a keeper!
Hi – I love this tool! Quick question, when I check all the boxes, will this change any formulas or links to external workbooks within my workbook? I am assuming it sticks strictly to formatting clean up and won’t mess with my formulas? Thanks so much!
Everything will remain intact (including all cell formatting). The tool simply removes bad styles and bad named ranges. First post clean up file save further optimizes file structure making file smaller leaving all content the way it was. Excel is really good at optimizing workbooks. Especially latest versions.
Is there a version for .NET4.5
I don’t understand the question: XLStylesTool for .Net 4.0 will work fine on any machine with 4.5. Windows 8/8.1 app is C# and XAML – so it is 4.5 at the core. What exactly are you looking for? There are no enhancements that I’m aware of to the classes I’m using in the app going from 4.0 to 4.5.
Hi XLGeek,
I’ve found your XLStylesTool extremely helpful (and THANKS for this and your other utilities !).
I wanted to ask, though (and apologies if it is already covered in answers to other comments that I may have missed): I’m running Excel 2010 in Windows 7 with all updates current. Do I need to install the Excel 2010 Hotfix or has that been included in subsequent Microsoft updates since the Hotfix was issued?
Thanks again,
Jeff
Hi Jeffrey, as far as I know the fix has been backported to Excel 2010 in the latest service pack (or maybe even the one before it) and you shouldn’t have to install it separately any more. Even with the fix all files need to be cleaned up. The fix only slows the bad style propagation down, but can’t eliminate it entirely.
Thanks, XLGeek, for the tools and your timely responses to follow-up questions (MS Support could learn a few things from you …).
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! This is a life saver!
Your program does something in the background, for my document still looks the same after applying the you solver. Important thing is that the too many styles error is resolved. Many thanks!
Glad it worked. Style is not equal cell format. Think of cell style property collection as an appendix: a rudimentary part that can get inflamed. By running my tool you just emptied inflamed appendix in your file. There was true garbage in it that started overflowing causing the entire file to be “sick” and that sickness can spread to other files. This is the best analogy that I can come up with at this point. There is nothing going on in the background. Pure Excel appendix purge operation that doesn’t touch anything else.
How many times could I say THANK YOU before this would be is considered SPAM?
Thank you a gazillion times… this worked marvelously!
XLGeek,
Thanks for providing this tool. Out of all the suggestions I’ve come across, your tool is the only thing that worked. I thought for sure doing this in VBA would work, however, the VBA approach seemed not able to get to a level within Excel that it had the correct access. Your tool removed all the extra junk and put the default Cell Styles back to what you would expect if you created a blank workbook.
Hello XLGeek,
I used your tool earlier today and commented. I thought since I saw you mention PowerPivot in a post on April 23, 2014 you might also know something about Power Query & SharePoint Lists. I’ve looked everywhere and can find no information as to why I’m having problems. I use PowerQuery to pull data from other Excel files which reside on a SharePoint 2010 server. Recently I tried to load a SharePoint List via PowerQuery with no luck. The Navigator never shows a list like I’ve seen in examples found on the Internet. I believe our SharePoint 2010 server is missing some kind of web service (or something) which prevents me from seeing the http://sharepoint.domain.name/_vti_bin/ListData.svc file which I believe is what the Navigator needs to display the Lists on the server. I have no idea what to tell a server admin to look for that is missing.
Just thought I’d ask in case this is something you might know right off.
Thanks a million for the XLStylesTool!
Marty Chapman
Hi Marty, if you have central administration access can you please check to see whether REST access to lists is enabled?
Excellent!
Thank you!
Love this tool. I deal with so many Franken-books that combine multiple worksheets from multiple workbooks and they inevitably become corrupted. There hasn’t been a corruption that this tool hasn’t been able to correct. If you leave out a collection jar, I would gladly make a financial contribution to it considering how much time and headache this tool has saved me. Thanks!
Hello
THANK YOU a lot
I used this tool today (I had 63008 Styles Max ID and 63009 Styles Node Count before) on a 10MB xlsx file.
It has come back to 0 styles
Very great
gk2015.08
Thank you again. I use Excel 2013 in separate instances to stop crashes, and had the “excel cannot paste the data” problem from one excel to another. I think it was because one of the excels had far too many formats, probably because i kept increasing and decreasing decimals and percentages. I’ve completely rebuilt the excel in the past from scratch, but hopefully this cleaned up has worked as i can now copy and paste OK.
I’d been having a problem for about a week and a half trying to copy and move a worksheet tab from a source document to destination document. Both docs had multiple tabs with many different formatting applied. I kept getting the dreaded “Too many different cell formats” error. I was told by my co-workers that the only solution was to copy each tab into a fresh document which would take an extremely long time. Even my “help desk” here at work couldn’t help me. I did an online search and found your tool then told my help desk that this was a possible solution. They downloaded it for me and I ran it just now. Cleaned both files (which took only seconds) and the error is gone. I can copy and move files as before! This is a great program- many kudos to everyone that worked on this!
It is just me :). Glad it worked.
Thank you very much this tool make my problem solved
The download link is broken for XLCleanerDotNET4.0.
[url removed]
Could you please kindly fix it? Thanks.
Seems to work for me and couple of people I asked to click on it to test. Can you try again and if it still doesn’t work give me the details: where do you try to access the URL from: location, OS, browser? OneDrive may have had service interruption.
Thank you very much, the regular XLCleaner works just fine on at least one excel file of mine. I guess it’ll work on other excel files as well. I’m working in Sundsvall, Sweden at AkzoNobel. Thank you very much, I’m guessing, for taking a lot of time in writing and finishing this tool.
I normally do not comment on this stuff, but this is amazing tool! I have tried EVERYTHING, and this fixed it. As I have mac, and did not get the webpage to work properly, I used wineskin client to open the exe file and it worked like a charm. Thanks!!!
HELP! why do I get a “This page can’t be displayed” when I click on the link to download? Does this download still exist?
Link is live. Do right-click open in new window if you have new browser window open disabled.
Sergei, you are a lifesaver. I ran into this problem 4 days ago with a ton of complicated ETL Requirements documents that had 15-20 tabs and hundreds of thousands of cells, each with their own formatting. We had templates and hundreds of documents that were all corrupt. My template had 64000 styles in it! You have saved my life as I was having to reboot multiple times a day because of this issue and couldn’t update my requirements! I am currently going through and cleaning everything up. Thank you SO much for building this awesome utility.
Two thumbs up! Excellent tool. Thank you very much.
The hyperlink to: XLCleanerDotNET4.0 sends me ‘this site can’t be reached’
Internet is working fine, is this tool still available for download?
Thanks
The share is up. Link points to a *.zip file. Check your browser settings and make sure it is not blocking the download. Can you download other zip files?
great stuff ! getting this too many cell format error when one tries to merge cells.
My office blocked access to the site where the download seems to be located. Is there any other location where I can download the file?
This is unusual. The URL points to secure Microsoft OneDrive location. What operating system are you on?
This tool is awesome!!! worked like a charm. no other solution was able to solve my issue without spending on it hours of manual removal of styles, references, etc. Great work guys!!!
Dear Sergei,
I’ve used your tool for the past two years with great success and now that I have switched to a new job I am about to download your tool once again to clean some messy files over here.
Thank you very much for your hard work, you’ve made our lives easier.
This is great! I had a really old spreadsheet that had become quite the hog. It took an 18MB file down to 10MB without losing any data or used style information. It must be doing something! My file loads faster and performs better on complex calculations.
Dear Sergei,
I have found and used your tools and it saved me from so much misery.
However, there still were some quite persistent corrupted styles that won’t go away with it.
Worst of all, it corrupts other workbooks as well if I have them open with corrupted one.
My current setting is Windows 7 with MS Excel 2010.
I have saved the corrupted file and uploaded it. I thought you might want to take a look.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7KHJunpSCBBQXlydXVCcm92bnc
I do not expect you to reply me or magically solve my problem, since you already did many times.
Again, I’d like to thank you for your great little program.
Your file is actually clean. You don’t have any custom styles in it. You have one custom slicer style in the file that shouldn’t impact anything in the workbook. If you close all Excel instances and open this file (or any other cleaned up file) in the brand new Excel instance you should see no extra styles. If you open a workbook with custom styles and close it and then open another file, custom style definitions form the first workbook may get retained in memory. Excel does that for efficiency – it already did the work to construct style objects in memory and assumes that you may want to re-use them. Styles imply consistent formatting, so this logic does make sense. The real world impact is somewhat different.
Thank you very much. Was afraid that I had to redo weeks worth of work as my document suddenly did not want to change font, insert lines etc. I could also not copy any worksheets into the document. Used XLCleanerDotNet4.0 and the problem was solved instantly.
Thanks Sergei, much appreciated!
Hi XLGeek,
This is Jenny from Shanghai China, our whole team is greatly benefited from your excellent tool, but right now we met a problem when using it, because of the system upgrade (from OS 10.10 to OS 10.12), the online XLStyles tool has never worked for any of us.(http://xlgeekwebapps.cloudapp.net/default.aspx).
Could you pls. give me some tips or guide on this problem? Really appreciate your effort on this tool!
What is OS10.12? Sounds like you may be on Mac. You will have to take it up with Apple and find out if they killed Silverlight support. Please share here if you find a way to keep it working through Mac OS support. You say that you are from China, but your comment came from an ISP registered to Apple in California.
Hi Geek,
Yes, the system is Mac OS, we located in China sharing the ISP WW. The lower version of Mac OS could run Silverlight, but new version of OS could not. I don’t know whether IT kills the support!
Hi Jenny, you may have to start with IT and Mac support. I didn’t make any changes to the SL app recently. Can you run .Net Core apps on your Macs? It may be an option for Macs going forward if SL support is truly getting killed.
Hello, I was just wondering if there are any software license terms or a EULA that governs use of this software. I understand it is free but was curious if any open source or other license terms apply.
What version are you using: SL5, .Net or Windows Store App? I’ve released XLStyles Tool as a freeware for personal use without any warranties. The core cleaning algorithm is patent protected to prevent reverse engineering attempts by the people that are trying to profit from the unfortunate situation.
I’m not yet using any version, but am interested in the .NET4.0 version. Use would be in a commercial setting, so I am trying to identify the EULA or software license terms covering this software. There do not appear to be any readily available on this site or in the installer. Is use in a commercial setting (no redistribution, no modification) permitted, understanding the software is provided without warranties?
Hi Matt, if you are not charging a fee for using the app or reverse engineer it then you are ok. XLStyles set of apps is intended for individual (personal) information worker use. These individuals can be part of an organization. The only thing I don’t want to see happening is someone using the apps or the algorithm to directly profit from its use.
Thank you for the clarification! An employee would be using it, but no fees will be charged related to the tool and no reverse engineering will occur.
Hello, I’m the IT guy in a bank and one of my users would like to use your app but the WinStore is disabled by default (8.1/Office 2013) in our environment. Is there a way to use the 8.1+ version without going thru the store? Thanks!
Loading from the app store is the best and most secure way to distribute the app. I won’t be able to support random on demand side loading requests – the app is free and support would take a lot of time. Can you let your user use Hyper-V, non-domain joined VM with access to the store? Or can you setup a standalone VM? If there is one user that needs XLStyles Tool there will be more in your org for sure.
Hello XLGeek!,
I am also an IT guy in a separate company that is in the same scenario. We recently upgraded our win7 pc’s to Win10 and at least 1-3 people were using the older version of this tool. Now we also have an AppStore blocked, Win10 environment. Unfortunately we are unable to give our end users the option that you suggested above. Using either the 8.1 version or if there is a Win10 version that is just straight downloadable instead of absolutely needing to go through the appStore would be greatly appreciated if at all possible?
Thank You for your time!
Hi Jeff, I think MS is working on the corporate versions of the app store where you as an IT admin will be able to whitelist approved apps. You should check with your account team. App Store is an ideal way for me to distribute the apps, keep them current and ensure their security. Side loading is not a good route. Have you tried changing GP to let them (i.e., 3 affected users) access the store, download the app and then disabling the App Store access? They won’t get the future updates, but at least should be able to use the app. Also, what is the rationale behind disabling the app store? All apps are reviewed and heavily scrutinized before they are published by MS.
Hi XLGeek – great tool, but we have the Windows app store locked down for security reasons. Any other way to get this app onto a Win10/Office 2016 machine?
Thanks!
Windows 10 should totally work with administrator assignment. Why can’t you work with your IT and use the user assignment method described here: https://blogs.windows.com/business/2014/11/20/windows-10-a-store-thats-ready-for-business/#BUkPgcdJKGi1zHpV.97?
I’m going to add another entry to this long list of praises. This tool worked wonderfully and was super easy to use – bless you XLGeek!
yet again this saves a spreadsheet. was trying to copy and paste from one workbook to another instance, and got the dreaded “cannot paste” error. cleaned up both spreadsheets and now all ok again.
Is there a version for Excel 2017? The app don’t support drag and drop and I’d prefer using it from inside excel. (Sorry if this sounds rude, it’s not my intention but my poor english).
Drag & drop is not supported in Windows 8+ app store apps. Locked at OS level.
Thank you very much.
I can’t thank you enough for this tool. I’m no Excel expert by any stretch of the word, but I’ve been modifying, adding, copying and pasting to the same file for over 5 years and haven’t had any issues until today. Since I’m just a rookie I thought my only option was to start all over…then I found you! You’ve saved me tons of work…thank you!!!
Thanks for this application. We have noticed in our use of this app that it requires a constant internet connectivity for it to run. The Security teams have hesitated on widespread use of the tool and would like to understand the need for internet access. Could you elaborate?
Internet access for Win 8+ is required for ad delivery. It is clearly described in the Privacy section in the settings. I can create ad free app. How much would you be willing to pay for it?
Hi,
i would like to install the tool on my companies computer since I need it to clean a file we are currently working on. The companies policy doesn’t allow the usage of the Windows App Store though. The IT department says it would allow me to install the XL Styles Tool with a EXE-file but they can not give me access to the Windows App Store. Is there a possibility to install the rool without the App Store?
Best regards
MAx
Your IT should follow these steps: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-store/distribute-apps-from-your-private-store. Windows Apps store is by far much more secure way to distribute and seamlessly update apps.
For what it’s worth, many years after this tool was created, I’m still using it, and most appreciative to you for it! Thank you so much for this lifesaver, it has helped me so many times! One thing that others might be wondering is, how to actually use the tool. (I couldn’t remember myself after first using it a while ago, and could not locate specific instructions.) All you do is, after downloading the XLStylesTool .exe file, you double click the .exe file, and it will bring up a dialog box that has two buttons, one that says “Get Excel File”, and one that says “Process File”. Click on “Get Excel File”, and find and select the Excel file you want to clean. Before you click the “Process File” button, I would recommend checking all the “Processing Options” checkboxes below it that apply. Then click the “Process File” button, and your file will magically open and be cleaned!
Reblogged this on lifopro and commented:
This worked like a charm! My excel file had crashed multiple times and was driving me to the point of giving up for the day! Use this tool to rid your worries of the dreaded “Too many cell styles” error message.
This is great! Thank you very much.
any way to run against multiple files, or run via command line? We have hundreds of spreadsheets with excess styles (they all copy something like 55k styles). I’ve been using VBA to kill the non built in styles but your tool is way faster. would be great to be able to batch process and entire directory of sheets….
There is command line tool for bulk cleaning published on this blog.
Sergei, thank you for the solution, you are awesome! Some of my old excel files were passed on over generations and generations of accountants (and therefore multiple versions of excel). You saved my bacon!
XLGeek your file works like a charm, great work and thank you very much
How do I install this plugin? I feel dumb asking but the zip file that downloads only contains folders. There is no install file or clear instructions on how to actually install it. Windows 7.
There is an .exe in the zip. Your virus checker probably removed it. Is app store an option for you? Windows 7 will be reaching end of life in 3.5 months.
So I downloaded it from the appstore, installed, and upon open it asks me to “get file”. I click the get file button and point it to a spreadsheet, check a box or two for styles but there is no preview (like the old version) before i click process file. What am I missing? I click process file and it says it processed but nothing else happens. Thanks
There is no “full trust” in the app store apps. They run sandboxed. I have to operate on the selected file stream and that makes the preview mode impossible. All changes are applied to the selected file in real time and super fast (typically in milliseconds). If any actions were necessary they were taken and applied to the file parts with subsequent save. You should see file “Date modified” property change in the File Explorer. This restriction is very irritating to the users and to me as a developer. I like app store distribution and free certificate that ensures safety and version updates. Everything else is not that great. If I port/resurrect WinForms version on .Net core 3.0 which supports self-contained executable, will you be willing to pay the lowest possible store price for it which I think is like a dollar? I don’t want to alienate or irritate users, but I need to offset the costs somehow. These apps began to take a ton of time to maintain. September alone had close to 4000 downloads with a lot of follow ups. New scenarios emerged that I need to handle. I expect these volumes to go higher as Windows 7 is getting phased out in the next 3.5 months. Need to do something.
I thought through your legacy app scenario request to have the ability to preview the changes and pushed an app update that just landed in the store. It will install automatically. You can try it out now if you are on Windows 10 64-bit machine. Confirm that you are on v3.0.1.0 (right-click XLStyles Tool app tile, choose More->App settings) before testing (store publish may take some time to hit all markets) then simply open the file you want to process in MS Excel. Excel will lock it for write operations. When you select that same tile in the app and hit “Process file” button file cleansing algorithm will process loaded in memory copy of the file, but won’t be able to update the file on disk because it is already locked by MS Excel. Tiles will display post-cleansing stats after you dismiss the error message that tells you that the file is inaccessible. Close the file in Excel to enable write access and hit get and process buttons again to update the file on disk with the changes that you previewed in previous step. Hope this works for you.
Hi! can you please tell me if there is any way i can instal the app from outside the windows store?
I’m looking at possible options. Are you on Windows 10? Does your company have private store or do they allow MSIX package sideloading?
Win running on Win 10 but muy company dont have access to the private store ….
Hi! any news related to this topic?
Thanks!
Does your org support MSIX sideloading? I’m still working on the secure distribution options for users in your category.
No, they will not accept that either 😦
Your software is brilliant i hope there is another way to get it !!
Thanks for your help
So what is acceptable installation medium then? I still have no idea what OS are you on.
They will accept any medium with the expetion of windows store and sideloading.
Im currently using windows 10 enterprise LTSC
Is there any other way?
Private store or *.msix for now if you don’t have store access. My focus is on controlled secure distribution.
Hi. I’d like to download this tool for Win7, but my company does not allow me to access to the link. Our IT security department said that I should get the program through formal route, without using detour link. Would you mind sending me a copy of this program to “y******@gmail.com”? It will be great help.
I’m not sure what the ask is. I’m editing your e-mail out from the post for security/privacy reasons. You can download a copy and email it to your gmail account now. It won’t more or less secure if it comes from me. If your IT dept wants to get an email from me that could help identify potential tampering, I can send you hashcode for .Net 3.5 or 4.0 versions. Just let me know which one you plan on using.
Well, I tried to download the program but our security policy prevent me from accessing skydrive. So I asked to our IT dept and they said I have to try other ways. Also, they warned me if I got the program thru skydrive at home and brought it to my office PC, it might be regarded as policy violation(I don’t know why…). They recommend me asking you to send a copy. It seems that they think it is the best way to avoid trouble.
I really don’t want to bother you, but I could not find better way.
Most email clients will block .exe or .exe inside a .zip file. I’m not sure how to best help you. Your email client will likely block these types of attachments. Windows 7 will be going out of support in January, so hopefully you will be able to use one of the app store app version in Windows 10. If you need Win 7, can your IT team give you sandboxed Win 7 VM?
Will this app run in a Citrix environment?
Yes per Citrix docs: https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-virtual-apps-desktops/manage-deployment/applications-manage/universal-apps.html.
HI XLGeek,
I’m the IT guy for a company which has the Windows Store locked. Do you have any option to download the .exe or the .msi instead of install it from the Windows Store?
Thanks in advanced.
Only option is to implement private store: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-store/distribute-apps-to-your-employees-microsoft-store-for-business. It is the most reliable and secure option.
Can you make source code for 4.0 open source
Or if you cannot, can you remove the line which check which version of window is using ?
Win 8 and up distribution will be from the app store only for security reasons.
No plans to do that. There are still attempts to take advantage of this situation by some less than ethical people. This is why I got patent protection and made all tools free. App store added some overhead.
It looks like it removed some Defined Names.
Comparing a before and after it looks like they probably needed removed, but is it supposed to do that?
Yes, the names that are removed are bad and can’t be used. Their references are broken.
Hi XLGeek, your program looks brilliant, but I have a windows 8.1 PC and Microsoft Store won’t install on W8.1 computers – it won’t recognise them.
Can you help with this issue please? Perhaps it might be time to release a download for W8.1 like you have for W7? I’d rather pay you than install windows 10, particularly as from what I have seen on the net this is a deliberate ploy by M$, exploiting hardworking devs like you as bait to force people to update, while preventing you from getting royalties from downloads from all us W8 users. 😦
Have you contacted MS support to help you with the app store issue? Windows 8.1 app still seems to be listed. I’m not after making money here. I need to make enough to cover the costs for all the cloud related overhead which is the current unavoidable reality. It just feels wrong to me for me to pay out of pocket for this app’s maintenance, so I created optional Windows 10 version for absolute minimal price. Advertising revenue unfortunately got killed. You can’t avoid the cloud tax any more. This overhead fortunately gets almost covered by the app store purchases of the small percentage of users that buy the app which I view as the contribution to the project and really appreciate. However there is not enough for enabling in depth telemetry. If paid user volume will go higher I will consider adding more robust telemetry for issue tracking. E.g., I see really weird errors coming from some APAC users with very intrusive content scan app interfering with the app trying to read the file. Love your part of the world by the way. Cracked my rib cage last year surfing Piha. Let me know how far you get with the app store and I will see what I can do here.
Hi, can you please help with how to get from the Windows app store for PCs running windows 8.1? The store wont recognise my windows 8.1 PC? And silverlight doesn’t seem to work in Firefox, Chrome or Edge? I am not a corporation, just a single user. Many thanks!
App version for Windows 8.1 is still listed in the store and there are no reported issues. You should call Microsoft support and they will help you resolve any issues with the app store working on your PC. Silverlight will work in IE still. I strongly recommend going with Windows 10 upgrade as soon as you can.
Hello. XLGeek.
Thanks for this application. I love this application.
I have some question. I know that I know that you have the copyright of this program.
Our company is very sensitive to illegal software use and copyright.
I want to use this program at the company, is there no copyright problem?
I want to be sure about this problem.
I’d really appreciate it if you could give me an answer.
How did you get the apps? If you are on anything above Windows 8 you can get the app via the store only. That takes care of all legal and compliance requirements for individual or corporate use. Are you on Windows 7 still then?
Hello, XLGeek,
recently i just got a mac m1 for word, fyi, i was a very fortunate user who use your app in windows. then i stuck with mac which not supported with XLStylesTool. May i know how can i run this XLStylesTool on mac?
thanks
Since the deprecation of Silverlight there is no Mac option. Mac doesn’t support WinForms. I can look into .Net5 command line option, but I don’t have Mac to experement on.
Hello, is there any chance that we could see this program in MacOs? (Apple Silicon chips) Thank you.
Ever since MS sunset Silverlight there is no tool support for MacOS. Hope virtualization is an option for you.
Thanks for this program. I usually have using this tool. And suddenly I thought who make this app. So I had find your name and try to find in the web. That’s why I remain some mention at here. I really appreciate your effort and those stories. Me too agree it and I proud to pay the app.
Thank you for kind words.
Hi there,
This app is amazing and insanely productive to clean up legacy files. However, as per current policies in my organization, the Microsoft store is blocked. Is there an offline installer?
I don’t offer offline installer. App is not generating any revenue ever since MS stopped supporting ads, so can’t justify signing certificate expenses. It would be very irresponsible to have unsigned MSI or exe.