Password protected excel file wont zip much

[NickA]

I have a password protected excel file created using office XP. Its 25MB (lots of pivot tables) so i want to zip it before mailing. If I zip it (using winzip 8.1 sr1) with the password it compresses to about 22MB. If I take the password off it compresses to about 4MB ! This doesnt occur on other passworded excel files that compress the same whether they are passworded or not. anyone know why this is and how I could make it smaller but keep the password intact ?

I tried passwording the zip file instead but my antivirus blocked it !

 

[Marcs41]

Your antivirus blocks a passworded zip?
If you need to mail one, disable that antivirus then temp.

Marc
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[NickA]

Thanks marc, I'd sooner find out why this particular file is not zipping than when others do than have to keep turning the anti-virus on and off.
I'll try recreating it from scratch it see if that helps

 

[Marcs41]

you are right about that, but I was wondering about the strange antivirus issue

 

[NickA]

its set to unpack arhive files to scan inside them. If it cant unpack them (because of a password or corruption) then they are quarantined. I could turn the setting off but I'd rather not !

 

[Marcs41]

Oh now I see, that is a very annoying option if you work alot with pwd protected files. I turned that off long ago.

 

[combo]

In my XP for a table with numbers - instead of file with mostly plain numbers in not protected file you get random (pseudo) bytes in a protected one. This is hard to compress much.
The solution seems to be moving password from excel file to archive file. In case of AV problem, what about creating self-extracting zip (still with zip password)?

combo