Excel 2016 Exports PDF 10x the size of Excel 2013

Hi everyone. I'm hoping someone on here can help me because I'm totally at a loss. We need to upgrade some individuals to Office 2016, however the ActiveSheet.ExportAsFixedFormat function appears to have been modified in Excel 2016 so that PDF's are generated literally 10x the size as they would be by Excel 2013. So an 8MB PDF file generated in 2013 would be 80MB in 2016. I guarantee this is no exaggeration. It's the exact same workbook, exact same data, and exact same macro. As a result I am encountering resistance to upgrading. Has anyone seen this or have any idea how to resolve it? I can provide additional information if needed. Below is the relevant macro code.

ActiveSheet.ExportAsFixedFormat Type:=xlTypePDF, Filename:= _
"Irrelevant Directory" & strPDFName & ".pdf", Quality:= _
xlQualityStandard, IncludeDocProperties:=True, IgnorePrintAreas:=False, _
OpenAfterPublish:=True

I have tried adjusting the quality parameter to xlQualityMinimum (but this only saved me 700KB) and IncludeDocProperties:=False (no noticeable difference). I have also tried the XPS format to see if that would make a difference (this was in-fact larger than the PDF). Any insight or suggestions would be appreciated. Is this just something in the back-end of Office 2016 that I cannot rectify?

Is it the same PageSetup.PrintArea?

Maybe your file has bloated? http://www.brainbell.com/tutorials/m...book_Bloat.htm

Maybe try different print driver but that should not make a difference in this case.

Try saving the xlsm as xlsb.

The workbook is quite large yes, but the print area and amount of data being exported is exactly the same. As mentioned it is the same workbook file and same version for both 2013 and 2016 tests. The resulting PDF's look exactly the same as well, but the one generated by 2016 is 10x the size, making it impossible to email. Print drivers are the same as well, and I don't think they are being called upon for the export function. This is a very confusing issue and there is little to no information out there on how to resolve it.

I tried a compression test by zipping the PDF exported from Excel 2016 and there is almost no reduction in the size of the file. This suggests whatever data is causing the bloat in the PDF is uncompressible which further suggests that it is image data. However when examining both PDF's side by side, I cannot discern any difference in image quality, though in the 2016 PDF some graphs take longer to populate.

I guess you ignored my tip to save the file as xlsb. When I did it, a 44 kb pdf file reduced to 22 kb.

I didn't ignore it, I simply didn't catch that last bit. It is certainly worth a try. I'll give it a shot and let you know the results.

Thanks for your suggestion. Unfortunately, in my case the resulting PDF is the exact same size as when it was in xlsm format (86,768KB vs 8,282KB in 2013). I had high hopes for your suggestion but unfortunately no joy. Thanks anyway though.

If you can find a small file that has that problem, feel free to attach it for troubleshooting.

I guess it was a problem in 2013 too. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...38b1d03?auth=1