how to convert newer excel files to microsoft office 2002

Interoperable: Office Open XML formatted files can more easily be pulled into other applications that can read Office XML formats.What were the advantages of switching to this new method of saving Excel spreadsheet information? There are many. This is a method of saving spreadsheet information in an XML file. With the release of Excel 2007, Microsoft changed the default to XLSX, which is based on the Office Open XML format. This was a proprietary file format created by Microsoft. XLS stores Excel spreadsheets in a file format known as Binary Interchange File Format. While Microsoft switching to the XLSX extension after Excel 2007 seems like a superficial naming convention change, the truth is that there was more change than just the file extension. The following extension types are connected to the Excel versions shown here:Īs you can see, the *.xls file extension is the default legacy Excel format for all versions of excel prior to Excel 2007.įrom Excel 2007 onwards, the default file extension for any Excel file was (and remains) *.xlsx.

The first group of file extensions are related primarily to which version of Excel the worksheet was saved with. As you can see, each of the file types have a descriptive name that helps with understanding what the file extension is for.

How to convert newer excel files to microsoft office 2002