Ever since a user of mine upgraded to iOS 6, he has been unable to open Microsoft Excel 97-2004 worksheet attachments from his email. Are there any additional steps necessary for this?
iPhone 4S, iOS 6
No longer compaitble. Send as PDF
these are coming to us from outside sources. telling customers to send us things in different formats doesn't work out too well most of the time.
is there a different mail client i could try?
Hi there,
just tested sending both an Excel 97-2004 xls and the a new 2008-2011 xlsx spreadsheet from my computer to my iPhone 4S running iOS 6.
Both file formats can be previewed from within the iOS mail client.
If you have Apple's Numbers app installed on your iPhone you can even work on those spreadsheets.
So the problem most likely lies elsewhere...
Hope this helps,
Chris
Will the spreadsheets automatically open in Numbers when the attachment is clicked on?
They open in Preview when you click on the attachment within the email.
Open with Numbers is one of the options of the Share menu.
Hi Christian
How do you get the iOS mail client?
Carole
hi there,
it is the blue icon with a white envelope in it. If I remember correctly it is located on the iPhone's dock by default.
regards, Chris
Oh is that what is called, yeah I have yahoo and exchange but it will not open the spreadsheet !
Carole
hi there,
you need to have Apple's Numbers app installed on your iPhone in order to make changes to the Excel file. Without Numbers installed you can (at best) only view the Excel file
regards, Chris
Has there been any news on this? I get an email every morning with an excel spreadsheet that my ipad won't open, it's kind of a big deal. I have tried all the free apps for opening excel on the App Store that I can find including google drive and none of them work. I would buy an app if I needed to but with no return policy in the App Store I'm not spending $ on something that may or may not work, as I think they must all use the same rendering engine to display documents which is why it's not working.
Does anyone have an answer? I can open the .xls file on my iphone, but can't open it on my ipad. I believe all my settings are the same on both devices.
Both hi there,
which version of iOS is running on your iPad? Do you have Numbers installed?
I just sent an email containing both .xls and .xlsx files to an email adress I check with the Apple Mail app on my iPad running iOS 6.0.1. The Mail app offers me both Preview and from there via the Share button both "Open with Numbers" and "Open with Google Drive" With both options I can view and edit the spreadsheets.
So either Apple's Numbers app or Google Docs should work for you.
Hope this helps,
Chris
Hi Christian, I'm running iOS 6.0.1.
So, I need to purchase an app before I can open these files? That doesn't seem right, especially since I can open them on my iphone.
It has nothing to do with an app. For some reason the ipad just wont open some excel documents, the app doesnt matter as they all use the same rendering engine, thats how ios works. Same as you when I had my 4S on ios6 it worked fine. My ipad mini with 6.0.2 wont open them, I dont get it.
hi there,
you only need an app like Google Docs or Apple Numbers, if you want to edit an Excel file on your iDevice. Read-Only access (Preview) should work from within the email app itself.
So, since it apparently works on some iDevices and not on others, pinpointing the culprit gets a little more difficult.
A few possible starting points:
Hope this helps,
Chris
Open a Microsoft Excel 97-2004 worksheet attachment
