Enormous Visio File FAIL

Question

This one is for a coworker:

We are having a problem with one of our wireframe sets (a Visio file). Basically, the file continues to increase in size and is currently at 43 MB (yes, forty three!), when the average of our other sets are at about 5-10 MB each. When I saved a copy to my desktop and deleted all of the pages so it was basically a blank file, the size was still at 2 MB. This file is causing problems:

1. it takes 3-4 minutes to save
2. [another coworker] was trying to save and it basically decided to delete all of her updates
3. we are very afraid that the file will become corrupt to the point where we will need to recreate it from scratch (a very costly possibility).

Any ideas?

Answer 1

I suspect that may have some unused shapes that you've deleted from the drawing page, but are still in the stencil. This MS support article gives some tips on fixing both this and other Visio size issues.

Answer 2

They found the answer...

It happens that Visio was converting one our icons to a larger file, and every time we copied/pasted it, it added a LOT of size (even though the icon is idddddy biddddy). [another coworker] is working on reformatting the image so we can use it as a stencil. Without the image on all of the pages, the file is only 4 MB!