Error "Unable to save external link values"

[planner in Maryland USA]

I created a budget vs actual model in Excel with several sheets of data,
vlookups, and indexing formulas on many of the sheets. Now I want to break
the data sheets into another workbook to reduce the file size and eliminate
duplication of data, among other problems. (We are planning about 25-30
copies of this model, one per dept.) I was able to trim most of the data
pages from the 6MB file to get it to 3.5mb except for the sheet with all the
expenses.

I have used ideas from this forum to clear my temp files and have saved as
html to clear all the baggage from the file and I am still unable to move the
expenses sheet without getting memory errors--first "Not enough memory"; then
"Unable to save external link values". What does this mean? Is my workbook
corrupt? Are the results of the formulas in the workbook correct? I'm
running Excel 2000 with 256KB memory. Short of retyping all the formulas,
this is as close as I can get to error-free file saving with all the formulas
and links. Seems others have larger files that don't have this problem so I
don't understand why my Excel cannot accomplish this change. Any advise
would be welcome

 

[SixString]

The more number of lookup formula you use, the slower your excel works, and
it does not depend on the file size. Try substituing your Vlookup and index
formula with a Sumif where ever possible.

An error as "Out of memory" means you should reduce the files running at the
background eating up your memory(eg: using msconfig). Check out which all
cell uses an external link by not updating the external link and with F5, go
to special and then look out for all the formula with error.