[Info-vax] WEENDOZE question

[Scott Dorsey]

 <VAXman-  @SendSpamHere.ORG> wrote:
>>
>>Was your job to write out an Excel Spreadsheet or a
>>Numbers|LibreOffice|Gnumeric|Shheets Spreadsheet?
>>You originally said "an Excel Spreadsheet".  The
>>customer is a Windows customer so we can assume they
>>wanted an Excel Spreadsheet.  If the spreadsheet
>>you created doesn't work with Excel how is it that
>>Excel got it wrong?
>
>http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/c071691_ISO_IEC_29500-1_2016.zip#en
>
>Download it and read it.  Then, unzip an Excel .XLSX and look at its contents.

The problem is that the .XLSX format is very very touchy.  It looks like
an XML file inside, but really it isn't.  You can write code to generate it
to the standard but that doesn't mean Excel will read it.  And if Excel does,
it might not in the next release.

It's safer to generate an old-style .XLS file.  It's even safer to generate
a .CSV file.

If your goal is to generate a file that Excel can read, you have a lot of
different options.  .CSV is almost always acceptable and is very easy to
write.  Sometimes it's not, and .XLS is needed.  I have never seen anyone
who really needed to create an .XLSX file but I have seen some who thought
they did.
--scott


-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."