Lazy software design
I found this amusing. I’m sitting here this morning working on my taxes. Leah keeps an excel spreadsheet to keep track of transactions, expenses, etc. It’s a fairly simple spread sheet, much like a checkbook balance book with a few more features. It’s all text and numbers, some bolding perhaps but no graphics.
The file in Microsoft excel format is 5 megabytes.
I was curious so I saved it as CSV, no formatting, just the fields and their values. The file is 328kb.
I got more curious so I saved it as the primary competitor to the Microsoft Format, Open Document Format. This format kept all the formatting and formulas so functionally it does everything the excel format does. The files was 720kb.
I’m not sure why Microsoft feels it necessary to insert greater than 400% more data into our file. If I was a conspiracy theorist I would wonder about agreements with hard drive manufacturers.
4 Comments
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Comment by Fullman — February 28, 2007 @ 4:52 pm
Office documents often store hidden/historical data. There’s a way to clear it out or prevented it, I’ve just not bothered to figure out how.
Comment by Alex — February 28, 2007 @ 5:09 pm
Good info! Thanks.
After that cleared out, the file is now 4.1 megabytes
Comment by Fullman — February 28, 2007 @ 8:12 pm
LOL, you’re such a cynic.
The old Office format is severely outdated, which is one of the reasons why they’re shifting to ODF. IIRC, the Office developers even admitted to the large filesize for the legacy format.
Comment by Alex — March 1, 2007 @ 9:37 am
I’m not being cynical, just pointing out something ridiculous. It’s good they admit it and are working to fix it, if they didn’t it’d be a real problem instead of an amusing anecdote.