Is there any proof that the Excel binary workbook (.xlsb) (especially for Excel 2019) is not secured against VBA password cracking? I'm yet to see a proof. I see mostly topics on other file formats and less of .xlsb
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I have a large project with Excel VBA files. Planning on moving from the xlsm file format to the xlsb (Excel binary). When I save the xlsm file as an xlsb I get warning.
It displays "abc.xlsm contains features that this version of Microsoft Excel can't save in another file format. Do you want to continue saving in this format and remove these features?"
Didn't know that xlsm can contain stuff that xlsb can't. Would be curious to know what exactly that is.
Anybody got an idea what the problem could be?
I need opinion on switching from MS XLS to XLSB. I have several models on MS xls file (Microsoft Excel 97-2003 Worksheet .xls) and have been using those models since many years. The xls files has lot of data, it has formula, macros, add-ins, formula to pull data from databases such as Bloomberg, Factset or Haver. I am planning to shift the model from MS Xls to MS xlsb i.e. binary format, however want to be sure if everything would work fine in binary format.
Can you please let me know if MS xls files are completely compatible with MS xlsb? ? Is there any disadvantage of using XLSB? Would be really thankful for your help.
XLS and XLSB are different file formats. The big disadvantage of XLSB is that it only works in Excel 2007+, so you can't depend on add-ins that only work in Excel 2000.
If your file works correctly in Excel 2007 or 2010 or 2013, then XLSB will preserve every feature from the XLS. This is different from XLSX, where many features are intentionally omitted.
Recently I switched from MS Office to OpenOffice.org 3.4.1.
Here are my questions:
I was not able to save .ods spread sheet to .xlsx 2007 Format.
The option which I got when I use Save As was Microsoft Excel 97/2000/XP (.xls) (*.xls)
I was not able to use in MS Office Excel 2007 formula in Open Office org.
Example a Formula like
=IF(AND(A2<>"";B3<>"");"";IF(AND(B3="";B2<>"");"GO";IF(A3="";",";"")))
Here is the test file for Formula MS Excel 2007 and Office Org
Edit:
Problem 2 is solved. The formula couldn't be copies at first. Also instead of , we have to use ; in OpenOffice.org
But I am still couldn't figure out how to save as xlsx.
I hope someone can help me.
Apache OpenOffice 3.4.1 (and earlier versions) does not store in OOXML formats (.docx, .xslx, .pptx). I don't know if that will be remedied in the forthcoming Apache OpenOffice 4.0 or not.
An alternative that does have some conversion capability for OOXML in both directions is LibreOffice.
OpenOffice Calc only opens, but doesn't save xlsx.
LibreOffice Calc also saves as xlsx, but the result will probably look weird with Excel.
If you want to get the best possible compatibility, I recommend using PlanMaker from SoftMaker. It has the best import and export filters for Microsoft Office formats and allows seamless interoperability.
PlanMaker is a part of SoftMaker Office which is commercial, but available for a fair price; if you don't want to spend any money, you can try out SoftMaker's Lite-Version FreeOffice which costs nothing, plus, btw., is much faster and smaller than OpenOffice and LibreOffice:
freeoffice.com
Could someone please explain the difference between an xla Excel addin format and an xlam Excel addin format? Googling didnt provide anything useful.
The m stands for macro-enabled which is the new format (as from Excel 2007).
These are add-ins that may call macro's.
On the other hand, you could also have xlax extensions, which are meant for macro-freeworkbooks.
Note also the difference between xls and xlsm, where xlsx files also don't contain macro's.
Why? My guess is that the main reason would be security.
Some people don't like to receive files, not knowing if there are potentially harmful macro's in it. In the old format, you could not make the distinction based on the file extension.
Both files are macro enabled files:
XLA files are excel files for office 97 - that are loaded as addins
XLAM files are excel 2003+ files, which are actually zip files that have xml documents inside them per opendocument protocol.
Is anyone familiar with a library or tool that can determine which format an excel file is in? Or, failing that, documentation on the different formats that would allow me to write my own?
The Excel file format is called the Binary Interchange File Format (BIFF) there are different versions of Excel that use the same version of BIFF.
Open Office document on the Excel File Format.
Take a look at the Open Office API, this should help you.
Excel 97-2003 workbooks are known as Biff8. They are actually OLE Compound documents which are essentially a file system within a file. They store the main workbook in a stream named "Workbook" and they have other streams for VBA modules, OLE objects, document properties, etc...
Win32 includes APIs for reading OLE Compound Documents. They are far from trivial. Once you get the "Workbook" stream, the first Biff record identifies the file as being an Excel file.
You can find excellent documentation from Microsoft on the Biff8 file format on the Microsoft Office Binary File Formats page.
The new Excel 2007 Open XML (xlsx) format is actually a zip file with workbook parts and is documented at OpenXmlDeveloper.org.
I am not aware of a tool which will simply tell you the format of a workbook. You could take the easy, but not very reliable approach of just looking at the extension which will be right 99%+ of the time - if accuracy is not an issue.
There are many tools to read xls and xlsx workbooks, including SpreadsheetGear for .NET which reads both.
Disclaimer: I own SpreadsheetGear LLC