Excel
Reducing Workbook Size by Removing Unused Styles and Data
Find why an xlsx is large by looking inside the zip, then remove unused styles, empty formatted rows, pivot caches, images and links to shrink the file.
8 min read
Topic
Excel
Where the business keeps its data. Reading workbooks, taming dates and formulas, and moving sheets to and from a database.
Excel
Analyzing More Than a Million Rows Without Excel Limits
Analyze data beyond Excel's 1,048,576 row limit with DuckDB, SQLite, pandas in chunks or the Data Model, and bring only the summary back to Excel.
6 min read
Excel
Converting a Huge Excel File to CSV or Parquet Safely
Convert a very large Excel workbook to CSV or Parquet with a streaming script, DuckDB or LibreOffice, keeping types, dates, encoding and every sheet right.
8 min read
Excel
Why Excel Is Slow With Formulas Over Many Rows Explained
Why Excel slows down with many formulas: the calculation chain, volatile functions, whole column references and scanning lookups, and how to find the cost.
8 min read
Excel
Reading a 500 MB Excel File Without Running Out of Memory
Read a very large xlsx in Python without exhausting memory: why xlsx expands, openpyxl read only mode, calamine and DuckDB, and how to measure peak memory.
7 min read
ExcelGuide
A Guide to Excel Files That Are Too Big or Too Slow
Diagnose an Excel workbook that is huge, slow to calculate or too large to read in code, then fix it by size, formulas, the Data Model or a different format.
17 min read
ExcelGuide
A Practical Guide to Automating Excel Work Without Clicking
How to move recurring Excel work into scripts: choosing VBA, Python, Office Scripts or Power Query, scheduling, merging, splitting, protecting and testing.
17 min read
YAMLGuide
Converting YAML to and From JSON CSV XML and Excel
What survives when YAML becomes JSON, CSV, XML or Excel and back, with a tested loss matrix, the type traps in each direction and a conversion checklist.
19 min read
Excel
Fixing Duplicate Column Names When Reading Excel Data
Handle duplicate column headers when reading Excel in pandas, Power Query and SQL loads: automatic suffixes, safe renaming and what duplicates mean.
7 min read
Excel
Excel Cell Contains More Than 32767 Characters Error
Excel allows 32767 characters per cell and draws only 1024. See what happens to longer text on import, export and in scripts, and where to store it.
6 min read
Excel
Fixing Circular Reference Warnings in Imported Sheets
Why imported Excel sheets warn about circular references, how to find the loop with the trace tools, and the fix for each cause in formulas and scripts.
7 min read
Excel
Excel Formula Shows as Text Instead of Calculating
Fix an Excel formula that shows as text instead of a result: Text format, Show Formulas, a leading apostrophe, manual calculation and scripts.
7 min read
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