>Scott Taylor wrote: >Hello all, > >I'm running an old UNIX legacy system where all the apps are writen in >PROGRESS. Often people want data to put into a spreadsheet, this is >simple if I write the output as a TAB delimited file and call it >blah.xls; then it just opens in their spreadsheet program without any >data importing functions done by the users. > >When I try to open these files with OOo2.Calc it just opens as a new >plain text file in Writer instead of as a spreadsheet Calc. > >Is there a way to force it to open as a spreadsheet instead? > >This is, basically, the only thing keeping me from converting the whole >office to OpenOffice.org. > >Thanks for any insight. >
The reason Calc is trying to open it in Writer is because it's confused as to what file type it is.
The extension XLS means it's an Excel spreadsheet, MS Office opens the file and checks the beginning few blocks of the file which tells Excel which version of Excel it was created with and everything, however if Excel doesn't find this it then defaults to try and open it as a TXT file in Excel, however with OpenOffice if it doesn't find this special block it automatically opens it as a TXT file in Writer. It is far better to do it that way, because if it's just a text file that's been renamed .XLS it might cause all sorts of rubbish to fill up the screen (also with the way MS Office does it, it's far more easier for someone to put a virus in the file!).
The proper extension for tab deliminated files is CSV. So if you make it create all files with a CSV extension not XLS then it will open correctly in either Excel or OpenOffice (or any other program that recognises CSV files).
Your other option is to try and get the spec for the Microsoft Excel file (good luck!) and get the program to write it to XLS standard, not CSV - but why bother?
Regards Darren --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
