John,

Oops. Never mind. With sheet background images, the file size does seem to
increase with the bitmap (uncompressed) size of the image. I was thinking
about inserted pictures, not sheet backgrounds.

You may be able to get away with a lower-resolution image.
--
Earl Kiosterud
mvpearl omitthisword at verizon period net
-------------------------------------------

"Earl Kiosterud" <nothanks@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:%23fIujwAYFHA.3876@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
> John,
>
> With Excel 2002, I've found that the file size increases directly with the
> size of the jpg or gif. I seem to remember in an earlier Excel that it
> apparently stored the bitmap, increasing the size substantially. Not
> sure -- I might be remembering something that never happened. ):
>
> --
> Earl Kiosterud
> mvpearl omitthisword at verizon period net
> -------------------------------------------
>
> "JDThree [MVP]" <john@removeforspam.lakesidenetworks.com> wrote in message
> news:%235ESyR8XFHA.3140@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
>> I've been digging through google as well as MS's support site and the
>> various
>> newsgroups, public and private, and haven't found any suggestions for
>> this.
>> I've found the question asked, but never answered...
>>
>> Is there any way when putting a background image in an excel file to keep
>> it
>> from shooting the file size up to several meg?
>>
>> An empty XLS file that starts out as 13.5K turns out to be 3.4 MB with
>> the
>> inclusion of a 10k GIF as a background.
>>
>> Thanks for any suggestions. Just looking into an option for someone who
>> wanted a background image for a template for some documents they
>> habitually
>> do. And since the watermarks are on top of the text, they didn't want a
>> watermark.
>>
>> There's not a concern about printing, though we did find a handy macro to
>> let
>> it print as well if you want, but these are mostly just computer only,
>> won't
>> see paper, so printing wasn't an issue even before we found that
>> solution.
>>
>> Thanks for any suggestions.
>>
>> --
>> John D [MVP - Tablet PC]
>
>