[Solved] Surprisingly large changes in ods file size

[BillW97]

I have a LibreOffice spreadsheet (ods format) containing financial information that is updated several times per month. Almost all the updates are fairly trivial in content: eg changing the values in a few cells, or adding a few new cells. Usually the ods file size fluctuates around 75kb, but just occasionally it jumps to 100kb or more even when I've made just a trivial change to the content. Usually after the next edit it'll be back to 75kb. Does anyone have any idea why this might be? I could understand it if I had made major changes to the content, but that's not the case.

This is not a problem to me, BTW - I'm just curious.

[RusselB]

This may be due to the type of information you changed and the compression level that Open Office was able to obtain when saving the file.
Your .ods file is actually a compressed file that contains several files, which in turn tell Open Office what data you had stored, the formats of that data, any macros that are associated with that specific file.
It may also be that your system is allocating extra space for the file based on the bit rate on your drive.
A variance of 30-35%, with a file that size, isn't something I'd be worried about, and I did note that you said it's not a problem.
If, however, you start seeing that file jumping from 75 to 750k, then I'd suggest getting your hard drive checked for bad sectors,

I see a similar variance when working with my budget spreadsheet, so it sounds like we're seeing similar variances with similar data.

[BillW97]

Thanks, that makes sense. I'll have to find something else to worry about now!