Description

This article is from the Spreadsheets FAQ, by Russell Schulz casfaq@locutus.ofB.ORG with numerous contributions by others.

14.7 Excel formats

these are capable formats, but their extreme complexity and
volatility makes them unusable for practically everyone except
Microsoft and licensees.

http://www.wotsit.org/download.asp?f=xls

http://www.wotsit.org/download.asp?f=biff
includes code to write (not read) Excel files

http://www.wotsit.org/wdatabas/msoffice.zip [error 1999-Jun-12]
how to get MS Office file format information for free

http://www.cubic.org/source/archive/fileform/misc/excel.txt
from Microsoft; includes code; for Excel 4

http://www.scitek.demon.co.uk/html/body_excel_toolkit.html
[error 1999-Jul-02]
http://www.scitek.demon.co.uk/html/body_download_page.html
[error 1999-Jul-02]
http://www.scitek.co.uk/ [error 1999-Jul-02]
libraries for MS Windows, DOS, and Unix (!) to read/write Excel files

http://www.gotovbs.com/products.htm
search for OpenExchange (and OpenExchange DLL)

14.7.1 Excel 1.0 format

14.7.2 Excel 1.5 format

14.7.3 Excel 2/2.1 format

14.7.4 Excel 3 format

14.7.5 Excel 4 format

Stores: Values, Equations, Formatting, Named Regions, Charts,
Multiple Worksheets, ...

Try to find the Excel 4 SDK (out of print) from Microsoft Press.

14.7.6 Excel 5/7 format

Stores: Values, Equations, Formatting, Named Regions, Charts,
Multiple Worksheets, ...

Buy the Excel 5 SDK from Microsoft -- your bookstore can order
it from Microsoft Press (1-800-MS-PRESS).

Microsoft Excel Developer's Kit
Version 5
Microsoft Press
ISBN 1-55615-632-4

Rumor has it that, because they are OLE compound documents,
there will be NO official Microsoft libraries to manipulate
them, except those on the MS-Windows platform.

The 'LAOLA' package is an OLE wrapper library for non-windows platforms.
http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~schwartz/pmh/laola.html

(this non-API method is not guaranteed to work for
future versions of OLE -- it only attempts to unravel
the current binary file formats.)

xls2csv is another project to read xls files:
http://www.ice.ru/~vitus/catdoc/xls2csv.html

biffview is another project to read xls files:
http://www.az.com/~drysdam/projects.html [error 2001/Apr/18]
http://freshmeat.net/redir/homepage/900554100/

14.7.7 Excel 8 format

Microsoft Excel 97 Developer's Kit
Microsoft Press
ISBN 1-57231-498-2

14.8 Applixware/Anyware Spreadsheet format (.as)

http://www.vistasource.com/products/axware/fileformats/SSFileFormat.html

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