Lack of interoperability with third-party tools.You must temporarily save your file as XLSX or XLSM, makes changes and save back as XLSB. You can’t make changes to the Excel Ribbon when working on an XLSB.So beware when opening XLSB files from unknown sources or from people/websites you don’t trust Security (VBA) – with the distinction between the XLSM and XLSX format you know which files may or not contain VBA macros.Compatibility – the XLSB Excel format is not supported by Excel 2003 and earlier versions, which frankly is less of a problem nowadays.Here are some that come to mind… XLSB disadvantages (XLSB vs. However, it’s not a straightforward decision as there are some minor setbacks. Yahoo! Well it would seem there is nothing less obvious to do then to start working only on the XLSB file format. In other file formats they don’t save properly Supports formulas above the 8192 character limit.From my experience XLSB files open and get saved 2x faster Similarly, when saving the file – the binary format is more efficient than dumping the data back into the XML and then compressing it. Opens/saves more quickly – loading binary data is faster than parsing text (XML) files – similarly as you would compare opening a book in Spanish and having to translate every sentence to English as opposed to picking up a ready translated copy.In some cases I heard of there being XLSB files that required 10% of the original file size – this is more visible with VERY large files This is more noticeable especially when working with large Excel files. Smaller file size – the Excel binary file uses noticeably less space.It mostly dumps the binary data into a binary file and saves it as XLSB. What happens when Excel wants to save an XSLB file? Not much really. It resembles the old XLS file format which was also a binary file. The XLSB file format on the other hand is a binary Excel file.
When an XLSX or XLSM file is saved Excel needs to break it down into separate XML files, compress it and finally save it as XLSX or XLSM. That is because Microsoft has opened the Excel file format and decided to break the insides into XML files. XLSX and XLSM files are in fact compressed archives with XML files inside. So what is inside an XLSX (or XLSM) file (image on the right). a single integer variable in an XML file will have to be embedded in a set of tags. The downside of text files is that they need overhead to build the structure into the text file itself e.g. Text files on the other hand (JSON, XML, CSV, text), as the name suggests, are files that can be opened in text editors (Word, Notepad etc.) and their structure is built into the file can be understood by simply reading the file.įor example a XML file usually it’s own notation of tags and markup, a HTML webpage has universally accepted standards such as HTML5, CSV files have columns and rows separated by column and row delimiters. Binary files can only be opened if you know the exact type of object that is the file. If you open binary files they might seem like gibberish. This is because binary files are a raw dump (basically 1’s and 0’s) of memory. Binary files are usually read and written to much quicker and are more smaller than non-binary files.
#Shortcut to save as xlsb how to#
Once you have the macro, you can assign it to a shortcut key or the Quick Access Toolbar.Excel file size still too big? Check out my post on How to reduce Excel file size What is an XLSB file format?Īn XLSB file is a Excel Binary Workbook file format. HorizontalAlignment = xlCenterAcrossSelection Doing this frequently within a worksheet can be a pain, but you can create your own tool to center information across whatever cells you've selected: You can, however, display the Alignment tab of the Format Cells dialog box and use the Horizontal drop-down list to choose Center Across Selection. There is no native tool on any ribbon tab that can perform this task. (This tool is available on the Home tab of the ribbon, in the Alignment group.) The problem with this tool is that it merges prior to centering, and you might not want any merged cells in your worksheet.įortunately, Excel includes the capability of centering information across a range of cells, without merging them. Excel includes a handy tool that you can use to merge cells and center whatever is within those merged cells.