Large Excel 97 wb crashing Excel 2000

[Fozzy9763]

I have a large wb that we use for a cross reference that has worked fine for years. Now I have two users trying to open this file in Excel 2000, and it crashes. I checked the file size, 13mb! I found that the person who has been maintaining the file was formatting empty cells, so I cleared all that, got the file down to 3mb. It still crashes 2000. I do not understand why this is happening. I have many other files from 97 that open fine in 2000. Please help. Thank you, Ken