Numbers wont open any excel .xls file generated in OpenOffice?

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Level 1

12 points

Numbers wont open any excel .xls file generated in OpenOffice?

Always understood that I could, if necessary, open an excel file in numbers and then save as a native numbers file.

However, I have discovered that creating a spreadsheet in OpenOffice, saved in ".xls" format (have tried all of the options, 95, 97, 2000, etc) then try opening in Numbers will not work.

Numbers gives an error message that the file cannot be opened/may be corrupted/wrong format.

Does OpenOffice do something that breaks this ability?

Am running an iMac with latest updates

Thank you

Earlier Mac models

Posted on May 24, 2023 11:34 AM

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Answer 1

Hawklord1858 Author

Level 1

12 points

May 25, 2023 11:56 AM in response to Hawklord1858

Thank you for both replies. OpenOffice doesn't have the option to save as ".xlsx", tried all of the Excel format options to save as, so that must be the issue.

The solution ended up being to save the file as a trusty old ".csv", which does open in Numbers, and with a bit of format fixing, mission accomplished!

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Answer 2

Badunit

Level 7

31,162 points

May 25, 2023 4:31 AM in response to Hawklord1858

Can it save in xlxs format? xls is an old format and Numbers won't open files saved in the older formats. Testing with documents saved using a recent version of Excel, Numbers can open "Excel 1997-2004" xls files but not "Excel 5.0/95" xls files. I do not have Open Office to try any of its Excel formats.

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