There is no guarantee that every one who has to open an Excel file has access to the same software. Even in a single company or organization, differences in computing power from machine to machine can limit the homogeneity of the software being used.

 

In any case, you may have to send an Excel 2003 workbook to someone that does not have the most recent version of Excel installed on their system. You might even find yourself trying to view an Excel workbook, on a platform that has another spreadsheet application installed, or no spreadsheet application at all.

 

Excel 2003 has the capability to save data in more than one file format. You can save data as a text file, as a worksheet from an earlier version of Excel, as an XML file, and as a web page. To save an Excel 2003 work book in a different format, choose File->Save As from the menu bar, and display the drop list next to the words Save as type: in the Save As dialogue box.

 

 

 

 

To save your Excel file as a different file format, choose the most suitable format from among the options provided in the list. For this example, the workbook data will be saved in CSV, or comma separated value format. This is a simple format that can be accessed by almost any spreadsheet application. Furthermore, it is fairly straight forward for programmers to develop software that can deal with CSV files.

 

Once the location and filename have been decided, simply select the CSV option from the Save as type list and click the Save button.

 

 

Here is the Excel 2003 worksheet we are saving.

 

 

 

When attempting to save the worksheet as a CSV file, the following alert appears.

 

 

 

 

Clicking OK will generate another alert.

 

 

 

Clicking the Yes button, will save the worksheet as a CSV file.

 

 

This is the CSV file as displayed in a basic text editor. This file can be opened by a wide variety of applications ranging from simple text editors, and word processors, to spreadsheet and database applications.

 

 

Here is the same CSV file opened as a Microsoft Access data base.

 

If you have to, you can easily open an Excel File as a Word document. Just start word, Choose File->Open, and select the Excel file that you want to view. (Make sure that the file type in the Open dialogue box is set to All Files so the Excel workbooks will be visible).

 

When you click the Open button the following alert appears.

 

If you click Yes, you will see the following dialogue.

 

You can choose to open an entire workbook, or a specified cell range.

 

Clicking OK will open the Excel workbook as a Word document.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the Workbook opened as a word document.

 

This is different from linking or inserting an Excel worksheet into a document.

 

The Excel worksheet has actually been opened as a .doc file instead of an .xls file