title: Saving an Excel File that has not changed will change the binary
body: <p>Whenever I save an Excel file, the saved binary will be different compared to when I opened it. This is even true if I did not change anything. This is because Excel saves non content related actions like selections for e.g.</p>
  
  <p>When dealing with a version controlled file I do not want the binary to change if content has not changed. In that case I do not even want to save changes to a column width for e.g.</p>
  
  <p>I want to see as few changes as possible in binary files. To get rid of many of them I already export and remove all VBA modules from the Excel file before committing. The VBA modules are then versioned as text files.</p>
  
  <p>A simple command line tool that tells me if two excel files are content-wise the same or not would be good enough. It should not be to difficult to write such a tool using <a href="http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/42504/ExcelFormat-Library" rel="nofollow">this library</a> but that would only supports Excel97 xls files. Libraries using OLE are more flexible but far to slow and unstable.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Best for me would be VBA code or other means that suppresses file-saving when no <em>real</em> change had happened.</strong></p>
  
  <p>Any hints?</p>