apps taking too much hard drive space - macbook

System information says I have 55GB of apps on my hard drive. I am new to OS X but this seems way to much for the literally 10 apps I have installed. They are however "big ones" like iMovie, xCode, MS Office,... I have installed a third party tool to view the disk space and it measures app directory up to 10GB which is what I would expect. Any suggestions what might be taking up the space? I have however found a 21GB file in documents named Microsoft User Data - are that and similar files a reason for those 55GB? And how do i get rid of them?

Welcome to the forums. . .

To start off with, iMovie and Xcode take up 9GB between them, and if you have other iMovie Packs then that could be higher. MS Office comes in at 1.7Gb so there is 10GB straight up.

Now for 10 or so Apps to be 55GB is not right IMHO, because I have 213 sitting in my Applications Folder and they only top out @48GB and thats with Adobe Apps, and some big Photography Apps as well.
As to the Microsoft User Data Folder, Im not sure why it is so big, as mine sits at 57MB, but then again, I don't use it a great deal. Only for Word Doc's.

Do use MS Office for Email ?? as I have read it could be emails mounting up, but again this shouldn't be reflected as a Applications Size issue. Goto your Apps Folder and right click MS Office and Get Info and see what size it says, or again, Applications Folder and right Click or Control+Click, Get Info and see what that says the size is. This way will be the most accurate.

I'm not sure the Microsoft folder would be included in that 55 GB. Depends on the software you were using. If you running Microsoft Office 2011for Mac open that Microsoft User Data folder and see what is there I've had Office installed for a year or so and for me that folder is less than 45 MB.

What software did you use to analyze the disk space? Did it identify anything that was taking up a great deal of space?