diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/poi/hssf/record/RecordFormatException.java b/src/java/org/apache/poi/hssf/record/RecordFormatException.java
deleted file mode 100644
index 63d05aa70d..0000000000
--- a/src/java/org/apache/poi/hssf/record/RecordFormatException.java
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,44 +0,0 @@
-
-/* ====================================================================
-   Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
-   contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
-   this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
-   The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
-   (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
-   the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
-
-       http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
-
-   Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
-   distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
-   WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
-   See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
-   limitations under the License.
-==================================================================== */
-        
-
-package org.apache.poi.hssf.record;
-
-/**
- * Used by records to indicate invalid format/data.<P>
- *
- * @deprecated as of 3.15-beta1, scheduled for removal in 3.17
- *      use the class with the same name from the utils-package
- */
-
-public class RecordFormatException
-    extends org.apache.poi.util.RecordFormatException
-{
-    public RecordFormatException(String exception)
-    {
-        super(exception);
-    }
-    
-    public RecordFormatException(String exception, Throwable thr) {
-      super(exception, thr);
-    }
-    
-    public RecordFormatException(Throwable thr) {
-      super(thr);
-    }
-}