XLSB - Any Disadvantages?

[pbody]

Are there any disadvantages of saving files in XLSB (Binary) formats?

I've recently started running some large files, and finding XLSB to be a big help, but just wondering what the disadvantages are?

Thanks in advance for your help!
Aaron

 

[xenou]

I've set xlsb as my default file type - one advantage is that I don't need to choose a different file type when I have macro's in the file. Of course they work beautifully. Otherwise, xlsb is described as a "full-fidelity" format, meaning it fully supports all the features that Excel offers. They should be slightly smaller and I believe I've heard that they may open faster.

Here are some posts/discussion/articles that I've found:

http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-excel/archive/2006/07/20/all-about-file-formats.aspx
http://excelusergroup.org/forums/t/398.aspx
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/01/formats-of-excel-2007.html

Quoting from the first article (office blog):

Even though we've done a lot of work to make sure that our XML formats open quickly and efficiently, this binary format is still more efficient for Excel to open and save, and can lead to some performance improvements for workbooks that contain a lot of data, or that would require a lot of XML parsing during the Open process. (In fact, we've found that the new binary format is faster than the old XLS format in many cases.) Also, there is no macro-free version of this file format – all XLSB files can contain macros (VBA and XLM). In all other respects, it is functionally equivalent to the XML file format above:

• File size - file size of both formats is approximately the same, since both formats are saved to disk using zip compression
• Architecture - both formats use the same packaging structure, and both have the same part-level structures.
• Feature support - both formats support exactly the same feature set
• Runtime performance - once loaded into memory, the file format has no effect on application/calculation speed
• Converters - both formats will have identical converter support

Disadvantage might be that in cases where you are working in a setting where different systems are sharing data or using data transformation tools, the xml format will probably be preferred (this is what xml is all about).

In my case, a disadvantage will likely be that the "official" file format of my company is currently xls and probably at some point will be xlsx, so I'm pretty much a rogue already so far as the rules go.