Excel 2008 : Mac Excel bloats file size & crashes using Advanced Filter

I've been using this version of Excel for about a year, occasionally using Advanced Filter with no problems. Now when I use it, it turns a 200K file into a 3MB file, and in most cases it crashes Excel and corrupts the file.

Sometimes the file seems fine - Excel doesnt crash, but when I close the file I cant open it again. I get an error that says "the file might have been damaged or modified from its original format".

This happens even with just one Advanced Filter use.

I tried rewriting the filetype to csv and opening it - which works - I can open it, but I can only see data from the first tab. These sheets have several tabs of data.

Most tabs of data are 100-800 rows long, so I'm not breaking the excessive rows rule (at least not per tab).

I do have one file that I have one Advanced Filter on that is bloated in file size, but I can still open it. I'm not sure what I can do to:

1. Get Excel to stop bloating my files when I use Advanced Filter
2. Recover old files (if possible)
3. Deter this problem from happening with future files

Thanks romperstomper!

I did need one update (with security updates) from 4/12. I downloaded that update and tried again. I'm still having the same issue.

For the purpose of troubleshooting, here's some basic info about these files: All files I've been using have several tabs. Each tab has a set of data that is in four columns (A-D) and anywhere up to about 800 rows. There is some color formatting: all cells in the worksheet are formatted white, and some header cells are formatted orange.

The issue (file size bloating, files crashing, and/or not enough memory alerts), when:

1) Custom filter:

• I'll use a custom filter on the data in the 4 columns
• The custom filter might be something like 'show all rows that do not contain x'. This works fine.
• Then I copy and paste everything from that worksheet into a new worksheet tab by selecting the little diamond in the top left that selects all rows and columns, and that's when I have the issues listed above - when I paste into the new sheet.

I thought maybe the formatting was the issue, but if I do a copy and then paste special > values, I still have the same issue. In the file I'm using to recreate the issue now - the file size went from 49K to 2.7MB after pasting (when I could get it to not crash).

2) Advanced Filter
I've been using advanced filter to filter out just unique records, and if I try to recreate the problem right now I cant do it - it seems to work fine & file size looks good. I dont know what exactly was causing the problem in that process, so I wont worry about that one I guess! (maybe the last update helped)

Any ideas? (ps and thanks for your help!)