can I open excel on mac

you should first off have a trial of office (at least it used to come on the macs and i dont see why it wouldnt now), a trial of iwork which 08 i think is supposed to handle office files. you can buy either of those and/or google neo office, its a free suite that is basically ms office, works smoothly but is not the best option for everyone if they have to use office all the time

-matt

There is Microsoft Office for Mac, there's iWork (Mac version of Office). If your co-workers or friends uses Office and you have to read many Office files, then I would recommend getting Office. If you want to create a nice looking productivity file then iWork is the choice. The cheapest version of Office is $150 (student & teacher version) and iWork is $80.

I did not receive a trial of Office with my new MacBook Pro (last Aug.), but there is a trial of iWork (Apple's version of Office). Numbers (the spreadsheet application in iWork) will open and export in Excel. While you can open an Excel file, in order to save it in a format which can be read by Excel you must select File>Export>Excel. I have had no problems opening Excel (both 2003 and 2007) documents with Numbers '08. There is the occasional glitch when exporting, however. I would recommend buying iWork if you occasionally need to use a word processor, spreadsheet, or presentation software and Office 2008 for Mac if you will need to use such programs frequently(make sure to buy the Mac version, and 2008 runs many times faster that Office for Mac 2004).

Hope I could help.

-AHeneen

hmmm there should have been, at least all my friends that had bought that machine abut a month earlier than you had it.

thats kinda weird, nothing in apps that is an office trial?
-matt

hmmm thats weird

just try a spotlight search for it, im not sure why it wouldnt be there because i am pretty sure it was in the standard apps, but it could have been changed so i dont know
-matt

iWorks '06 does not have the spreadsheet application, called Numbers. That was introduced in iWorks '08.

Try the freeware NeoOffice. That can read and write Excel spreadsheets as long as they're not in the new format (.xlsx).

If you only need to view the Excel document, you should be able to use Quick Look
Save the file locally, then ctrl-click (or right click) on the file and select "Quick Look" from the sub menu.

but will that work with out any application installed that can view the doc?

-matt