Prepare your workbook to be shared using UpSlide's Clean and Prepare feature. When applied, your workbook will be saved, and a cleaned copy will be created.

Clean

The Clean operations are designed for large, old, or corrupted files. The goal of the functionality is to remove unused metadata and formatting and reduce the size of the file while preserving the original data.

Clean provides the following benefits, most notably when working with legacy files initially created using Excel 2003:

• Smaller files (up to 95% size reduction).
• Shorter load times.
• More stable files.
• Fewer error messages when opening, closing, or copying worksheets.

Names and metadata

To clean a file's metadata, select the options under Names. This functionality will remove hidden and visible names with broken references.

You can see the visible names in your workbook by opening the Name Manager either in the UpSlide ribbon or in the Formulas tab. If you can't open the Name Manager, it means there are too many names to display. This is an example of when to use the Clean functionality.

Styles

The Styles cleaning option removes all unused styles from your workbook.

Copy-pasting content from other workbooks can import some of the styles. If your workbook contains too many styles, you won't be able to add any more, which can result in not being able to apply a cell background colour or use UpSlide's Slide Format. It can also affect the overall aspect of a workbook by changing the default font.

View and range

In Excel, cells that contain information are included in the active range or what Excel will consider "useful cells" in your workbook. However, if you've applied the style Bold to an entire column, the information will be stored in your workbook but the style will only be visible if there's content in a cell.  

Cropping a worksheet to its actual range will remove style information from cells that are not useful. A background colour in an empty cell will be considered useful and will not be removed by this cleaning functionality.

Cleaning an Excel file

To clean your workbook: 

1. Navigate to the Modeling group in the UpSlide ribbon and click Clean.
2. Select which operations you would like to perform in the Clean tab in the pop-up window. 
3. Click Clean at the top of the window. 

At the end of the process, a confirmation window will appear with a report showing you exactly what was cleaned in your workbook, as well as the resulting reduction in file size. 

Prepare

The Prepare operations are designed to make your workbooks ready for viewing by others, whether internally or externally.

For instance, when sending a document to coworkers, you may want to remove all watches, remove your comments, and remove autocolor. When sending the workbook to your boss for approval or before a meeting, you may want to make sure that the first worksheet is selected, the first cell is selected on every worksheet, and the zoom level is reset. Finally, when sharing a model outside the company, you may want to protect your model by replacing all formulas with their values, and remove all names and hidden worksheets.

In total, 10 prepare operations are available:

• Select the first cell (A1) on every worksheet
• Select the first worksheet
• Replace formulas by their values 
• Remove all names 
• Delete hidden rows, columns, and sheets 
• Remove all links 
• Reset the zoom level 
• Remove all watches
• Remove all comments 
• Remove the styles applied using Autocolor

To prepare your workbook: 

1. Navigate to the Modeling group in the UpSlide ribbon
2. Click Prepare
3. In the Prepare tab in the pop-up window, select which operations you would like to perform 
4. Click Prepare at the top of the window 

At the end of the process, a confirmation window will appear with a report showing you exactly what was prepared in your workbook, as well as the resulting reduction in file size.

Recommendations

The Clean and Prepare feature performs heavy automated operations and can successfully remove objects that Excel itself cannot get rid of. By design, it is often used on bloated, or even corrupted files that often make Office unstable.

Because of this, UpSlide is sometimes unable to continue treating the file and must stop. If this happens, the operation that caused the process to stop and couldn't be performed will be signaled by a red error icon. It is strongly recommended in this case that you restart Excel. It usually means that your file is too complex or damaged to be treated by the Smart Clean and it would fail again on another attempt.

To reduce the chances of Excel becoming unstable, we recommend you take the following actions:

• Unprotect your workbook, worksheets, ranges, etc.
• Close all other open workbooks
• Don’t use your computer while UpSlide is cleaning your workbook