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I have a report in an HTML file that is over 230 MB -- it's huge!

I need to open it somehow; I tried Mac (Safari), Firefox (Win32 and Ubuntu), Windows Explorer (Windows XP), notepad2 (Windows XP), but nothing seem to open it...

Any ideas how I can open it or split it into several files and open it?

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9 Answers 9

5

On a Mac or Ubuntu box the split command does exactly what you want. The easiest way to use it is with the -l (lines) argument.

  1. Open a terminal window.
  2. cd to the directory where your giant file lives.
  3. Type:

    split -l 5000 filename
    

    where "filename" is the name of your file and 5000 is the number of lines you want in each piece of the file.

  4. Your files will be named xaa, xab, etc. by default.
5

Use Opera. I've successfully opened .html files larger than that using Opera.

  Opera (web browser)
  http://www.opera.com/

There will be an initial delay during loading (because the file is unusually large), but after that all should be well as long as your system isn't low on memory.

If your OS is lousy at dealing with large files, one fix is to install Apache HTTPd to run as a local daemon and then place the 230 MB .html file in the DocumentRoot. From there, you should be able to load it with Opera or Firefox relatively quickly (and probably faster than as a local OS-based file) using something like http://localhost/filename.html as the URI; I use this trick to load large .html files faster under Windows.

4

The Unix utility less does not need to read the entire file to open it.

less myfile.htm

You can use and to scroll, Q to quit.

The split command can also split a many-lined file into separate files:

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I'd try to open it in a text-editor like e-texteditor or notepad++ on windows or bbedit or textmate on a mac. These usually will open files that size. From there you can try and split it into smaller pages.

3

To open in in a Windows text editor program such as UltraEdit or Notepad++ , disable the line-numbering and bookmark margin before opening the file. Line number slows down some text editors.

2

Try vim. I've used it to open much bigger files than this.

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He said it's a report. I found this discussion while trying to open a 550MB report. Mine was generated by an Active Directory permissions reporting tool. While I could technically open the document with Notepad++, it's not very useful that way. Unfortunately, the tool doesn't allow exporting to Excel, CSV, or any more useful format than HTML.

And as Randolf Richardson suggested, I found that Opera loaded it without complaints. It took a long time to load, and filtering features in the page (to make the huge file usable) weren't available until it was loaded, but Opera didn't complain where Firefox just crashed.

I found that Excel will also open it though (at least 365 / Version 2104), and since my report has columns, this is actually more useful for me. I can use Excel's sorting and filtering features rather than those in the document. YMMV, as they say - depends on your document.

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Wow, I face the same issue with viewing a 150MB file. Chrome/Edge not are not working, this is a certificate of poverty, I have plenty of RAM, however these browsers crash on this file. Now I found Firefox was able to load it entirely.

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-2

A 230 MB HTML file sounds very, very unlikely unless it was created by a script or program. You do mean just a plan HTML file, not an MHT or something, which might contain graphics or movies?

Try the Unix "file" command to see if it's really HTML, or just "less" as elliot42 suggested.

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  • "I have a report in an HTML file" Yes, this was very likely automatically generated.
    – moi
    Oct 20, 2022 at 13:52
  • Point. Note that I wrote that 11 years ago.
    – CarlF
    Oct 21, 2022 at 2:45

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