xls2003 file sizes with embedded jpg

[mdmilner]

Does anybody know/can anybody confirm a statement I've heard recently.

My company "adopted" the use of a spreadsheet (very limited code) as a template to present photos with some relevant information regarding the photos (I work for a railroad and these are photos related to derailments and the handling of the railcars)

The problem is, photos being pasted into Excel tend to retain their original size (unless resized manually or via code [it resizes via code]). I've actually been told their original Office2K (excel2K) spreadsheets could 'reduce the size of the files'.

This is, of course, nonsense. Photo images (JPEG) are already near minimum size for the given pixel counts...to reduce a photo size you *must* reduce the number of Pixels and thus lose quality.

The most recent statement (from this other company) is that they upgraded to Office2003 (Excel2003) and that version reduces the file sizes even further.

Obviously - I'm skeptical of the assertions. Has anybody else had any experience with this? Could Office2003 do a better job of auto-resizing photos?

And lastly, does anybody have any suggestions? I'm wondering if there might be some commercial software available that is able to resize photos in a way that best retains quality. At this point I'm thinking of pushing these other groups towards PDF files.

Mike

 

[mdmilner]

hmmm

going to cross-reference two posts.
I think this explains why the xls files seem large:

http://www.mrexcel.com/board2/viewtopic.php?t=137974

Excel stores embedded images as BMP's.

Nax

 

[Gates Is Antichrist]

What you (he) heard may be .PNG:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HP030770241033.aspx

Perhaps this will lead you to some answers - Access and Excel 2003 image file size discussion and links:
http://www.ammara.com/articles/accesspictureole.html

.PDF files are the enemy of data. Generally speaking, if you want to punish users' ability to use data, use .PDF. * But if you still want to go that way,
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HP030770691033.aspx

* I wish every government agency in the entire U.S. would "get" that point

 

[mdmilner]

Reading the explanations, especially the second really makes me wonder. If OLE Embedding support was removed from O2003 -- then their machines are using some other package installed on their corporate machines to view the images.

This suggests to me that merely installing O2003 (& Excel2003) is insufficient. We'd have to make sure the user's file open types are all the same.

Fortunately, this is possible. I think by the time my employer is going to upgraded to O2003, they also plan to upgraded to WinXP at the same time -- and I should be able to force them to consider this need in their standard HD images.

Mike