Windows XP and XLS Viewer?

Chip Fossa · Post by **Chip Fossa** » 8 Jan 2010 7:05 pm

A friend is running XP on his PC; and the soup kitchen he runs has need not only for food, but an equipment upgrade as well.

As it stands now, his superiors gave him an "old" MS .xls file [or whatever] so he can compose a list of the soup kitchen's clientele and how much food is consumed per week/mnt/yr etc.

I tried to help him tonight [over the phone] in getting it so he could open the xls file they gave him to work with. He was able to download/install an .xls viewer of sorts, but could not make any entries to it.

So, maybe this .xls viewer was exactly as stated: A Viewer - that's it. Nothing else. Can't write to.

Is this the case?

Where can he get a FULL .xls program? Any free ones around?

Thanks all.

Help out my friend; help out the really desperate.

Mitch Drumm · Post by **Mitch Drumm** » 8 Jan 2010 11:26 pm

Chip:

XLS files are produced by Microsoft Excel, which is not free.

However:

He can download Open Office from www.openoffice.org.

Think of it as a free replacement for Microsoft Office.

I haven't actually used it, but am told that it will open Excel documents. When a file is altered, it may have to be saved in another format, but could then be reopened by Open Office as needed.

I'd guess any so-called Excel viewer is just that--it won't be able to make changes to the file--unlike Open Office.

You would do well to download a copy for yourself because spreadsheets (Excel files) are a wonderful way to keep track of or organize damn near anything.

It has been around for a long time now and should be pretty well polished.

Chip Fossa · Post by **Chip Fossa** » 9 Jan 2010 12:22 am

Mitch...

Thanks, again, for your experise and bravado.

I'll simply email this SGF discourse to my good pal.

Mr Mitch

Cal Sharp · Post by **Cal Sharp** » 9 Jan 2010 9:00 am

He can download Open Office from www.openoffice.org.

Think of it as a free replacement for Microsoft Office.

Been using it for quite a while. Works good.

Chip Fossa · Post by **Chip Fossa** » 9 Jan 2010 1:04 pm

Thanks, too, Cal, for the vote of confidence.

John Cipriano · Post by **John Cipriano** » 9 Jan 2010 1:12 pm

I'd even say OpenOffice is better than Works, which costs money.

Microsoft used to put out the Excel and Word 2003 Viewers but I can't find them on their site now, maybe they're discontinued. But anyway I've only ever seen them on OEM machines, presumably because they're easier for an OEM to support than OpenOffice, even though OO is a much better solution.

Chip Fossa · Post by **Chip Fossa** » 9 Jan 2010 1:20 pm

Likewise, John...

Thanks for your input; as always.

Chip Fossa · Post by **Chip Fossa** » 12 Jan 2010 7:29 am

Well,

I spent the whole past Sunday at my friend's house playing music, drinking beer, watching the NE Patriots get the living $#&^ drummed out of them, and trying to get OpenOffice to work.

We plugged in his memory stick with the soup kitchen program on it,
right clicked on it's icon [G\] and clicked Open With; then tried to open with OpenOffice.

An error flag popped up and said:

(G\) Copy of MSR 09-01 .xls is not a valid Win32 application.

The program on his MemS said: MS Office Excel 97-2003 Worksheet.

I looked around at 'Win32 applications' and a couple of things were noticed as to why you might get that error flag. One was whether or not the program was written in 64 or 32 bit and his PC if it's 64 or 32 bit, and that both have to be the one or the other.
All the other posssible problems didn't seem to apply.

The beer was admitedly closing in about this time, so we may have missed a crucial step, too.

John Cipriano · Post by **John Cipriano** » 12 Jan 2010 8:09 pm

Without seeing it first-hand, it sort of sounds like the file is corrupt. I can say for sure that the architecture (32-bit or otherwise) of the computer has no bearing on whether or not you'd be able to open the file.

Anyway, try opening OpenOffice and then selecting Open in the File menu from within the program and then navigating to it and trying to open it that way. Who knows, it may work that way, if you haven't already tried that method.

Chip Fossa · Post by **Chip Fossa** » 13 Jan 2010 2:57 am

Thanks John,

That was definitely a missed step: Navigating to the memorystick within OpenOffice.

We'll give that a try.

Cal Sharp · Post by **Cal Sharp** » 13 Jan 2010 8:27 am

I would copy the file from the mem stick to the comp and then try John's suggestion.

Chip Fossa · Post by **Chip Fossa** » 13 Jan 2010 9:00 am

I just talked to my friend this morning, and apparently, yesterday at work, he found an MS Excel install CD, took it home, installed it, and BINGO, he got the program to work.

I told him to still keep OpenOffice on his PC, and he said, "OK".

So thanks again, one and all, I appreciate the fine effort, and this topic now can be closed.

Harold Liles Jr · Post by **Harold Liles Jr** » 15 Jan 2010 7:09 pm

I ditched MS Office about a year ago for Open Office and have no regrets. OPen Office is great!!

Chip Fossa · Post by **Chip Fossa** » 15 Jan 2010 10:02 pm

Harold...