MS Excel 2007 Warning Significant loss of functionality

I have created a template in MS Excel 2003. In MS Excel 2007, when I save it in MS Excel 1997 - 2003 format, it gives a compatibility warning;

Significant loss of functionality

This workbook contains data in cells outside of the row and column limit of the selected file format. Data beyond 256 (IV) columns by 65,536 rows will not be saved. Formula references to data in this region will return a #REF! error.

I can't figure out why Excel 2007 is showing this error while I have not used more than 50 rows and 14 (N) columns. I have googled it and found many solutions (actually suggestions) but no solution helped me solve this. Anybody here, who knows the solution or at least lead me in the right direction.

1 Answer

I solved it. I removed data validation criteria from a range of cells, Excel 2007 is pointing to (regarding out of range) and then saved it in 97 - 2003 format in Excel 2007, it got saved successfully without any warning or error.