Older excel won't open spread sheet

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Steve - 24 Oct 2003 19:55 GMT

Hello,

I created a spread sheet at home with Excel XP or 2000
(not sure what its called) and e-mailed it to myself at
work. We have an ancient version of Excel on Win 98 at
work, ver 5.0a. When I try to open the spread sheet it
says it is not a valid Excel format. It has an '.xls after
the name of the file. Isn't that a valid format??

Please Help!!

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Chip Pearson - 24 Oct 2003 20:05 GMT

Steve,

Excel version 5 uses a file format called BIFF5, and Excel 97/2000/2002/2003
uses a file format called BIFF8. Excel 5 cannot open BIFF8 files, which is
why you get the "invalid file format" message, even though both file formats
use the "xls" file extension.

You can, in later versions of Excel, store the file in the earlier format
when you do a Save As, that will allow Excel 5 to open the file. In the
Save As dialog, change "Save As Type" to "Excel 97 & 5/95 Workbook". Of
course, you won't be able to access newer features in the earlier version.

Signature

Cordially,
Chip Pearson
Microsoft MVP - Excel
Pearson Software Consulting, LLC
www.cpearson.com chip@cpearson.com

> Hello,
>
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>
> Please Help!!

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Kim Mitchell - 26 Oct 2003 02:30 GMT

You can get a free Excel viewer from Microsoft. I do not know if it will
allow you to copy/paste what you view to your version of Excel.

Kim

> Hello,
>
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>
> Please Help!!

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