I received an Excel spreadsheet from a co-worker recently, opened it
under Gnumeric. Once in Gnumeric, I noticed that for some reason,
there appeared to be 3 "sheets" to this spreadsheet, the last 2 of
which were blank (this seems to be a thing with Excel, other
spreadsheets I've seen in the past also exhibit this behavior).
I then did the following:
- Removed the 2 blank sheets
- Re-Saved it in Excel 95 format
- Saved it in Gnumeric XML format
Here are the results:
-rw-r--r-- 1 pll pll 16384 May 7 08:26 sync_wr_performance1.xls.orig
-rw-r----- 1 pll pll 15360 May 7 08:26 sync_wr_performance1-nosheets.xls
-rw-r--r-- 1 pll pll 2718 May 7 08:21 sync_wr_performance1.gnumeric
So, using Gnumeric just removing the 2 blank sheets from this file reduced
the size of the file by over 1k. Further, saving it as an XML file further
reduced it to 2.7k! That's slightly more than 1/6 the original size,
that's what, roughly an 84% reduction?!
Performing the same excercise with OpenOffice 1.0, the results are a
little different:
1 -rw-r--r-- 1 pll pll 18944 May 7 08:40 sync_wr_performance1-OOnosheets.xls
2 -rw-r--r-- 1 pll pll 18432 May 7 08:41 sync_wr_performance1OO95
3 -rw-r--r-- 1 pll pll 7337 May 7 08:41 sync_wr_performance1.sxc
The first is the original spreadsheet doc saved in Excel 2000 format
from OpenOffice 1.0 (minus the 2 blank sheets). Notice the size actually
increased the file size more than 2k. However, saving from the real Excel
in Excel 2000 format, actually increased the file size by more than 8k! :
-rw-r--r-- 1 pll pll 24064 May 7 08:48 sync_wr_performance1-real2K.xls
File '2' above is saved in Excel 95 format from OO1.0, and the file
size is still 2k greater than when saving in Excel95 format from
Excel 2K or Gnumeric!
File '3' above is the original file sans empty sheets, saved from
OO1.0 in the native OO format, which more than %50 smaller than the
original file, and greater than 60% smaller then if stored in native
Excel format!
So, want to sell Linux and Open Source/Free software? Show people
how they can save money by switching to open source software,
and reducing their storage needs by between %50 and %85!!!
Obviously if the environment doesn't create a lot of doc/xls files,
these numbers are meaningless! However, any place which does create
a significant amount of word/excel docs will benefit tremendously
from switching their software and changing the default file format
the data is stored in!
Just an FYI for those who care about these sorts of things :)
--
Seeya,
Paul
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