Converting Excel 2007 files to OpenOffice?

GeoTrail · Post by **GeoTrail** » Wed May 23, 2007 8:24 pm

Is it possible to convert Excel 2007 files to OpenOffice?
I opened xlsx file in Ubuntu and it opened in the Archive manager, so it is obviously a compressed file. I can see the three worksheets in there in xml format but it's impossible to read. I want to be able to keep working on the worksheets in OpenOffice spreadsheet. Any takers?

WishMaster · Post by **WishMaster** » Wed May 23, 2007 8:40 pm

1) Don't use these files. To exchange documents ODT and PDF are the best choice.
2) Use OpenSUSE 10.2 or Novell SLED there is a converter for those distris: http://download.novell.com/SummaryFree. ... SrjfdE4U58~

milan1612 · Post by **milan1612** » Wed May 23, 2007 8:53 pm

I think you can save documents in Office 2007 in both the new format and the old doc/xls...
I always save my Word Documents in the old doc format.

Trond · Post by **Trond** » Wed May 23, 2007 9:00 pm

I opened xlsx file in Ubuntu and it opened in the Archive manager, so it is obviously a compressed file.

No, Linux's filetype handling is broken...

Open the file in Excel and save it as a comma-separated csv file. Then open it in OpenOffice and continue working on it.

GeoTrail · Post by **GeoTrail** » Thu May 24, 2007 7:12 am

Thanks for the tips guys

WishMaster · Post by **WishMaster** » Thu May 24, 2007 3:34 pm

> No, Linux's filetype handling is broken...
What a nonsense. If I'll send you some files created by programs you haven't installed, the good® Windows® won't recognise them - even if they are actually a supported archive format as the OpenDocument or „Open“XML files are.

Trond · Post by **Trond** » Thu May 24, 2007 3:38 pm

WishMaster wrote:> No, Linux's filetype handling is broken...
What a nonsense. If I'll send you some files created by programs you haven't installed, the good® Windows® won't recognise them - even if they are actually a supported archive format as the OpenDocument or „Open“XML files are.

The point here is that it should not be recognized, but it is recognized as the wrong type...

WishMaster · Post by **WishMaster** » Thu May 24, 2007 3:46 pm

That's also nonsense my dear Trond.
As I said, these new (Open/Microsoft®/)Office formats actually are some zip files - as you're obviously using just Windows® with its dumb filetype recognition, just try to rename them to .zip.

Trond · Post by **Trond** » Thu May 24, 2007 4:11 pm

No, it's not nonsense. Linux file type handling is broken.

Example 1:
Download http://www.freepascal.org/packages/gtk/gtk-4.pdf . Open it in Evince. Rename it to gtk-4. It still opens in Evince, but Evince says unhandled mime type. The overall system is broken because some parts depend on the file header while some parts depend on the file extension still other parts depend on the contents of the file after the header.

Example 2:
The file command recognizes abiword documents as xml documents. Thunar recognizes abiword documents as abiword documents. There is no consistency, so the system is essentially broken.

Example 3:
The file command recognizes pb files as "ASCII text", except one I have, which happens to have a txt extension, which is recognized as "ASCII English text".

Example 4:
Running file * in the main source directory of fbpanel-4.5 gives us some definetely broken results:

Code: Select all

CHANGELOG:        ASCII make commands text

make commands in the changelog?

Code: Select all

COPYING:          ASCII English text
CREDITS:          ASCII English text
INSTALL:          ASCII text

Some are English text while others are just text. Although all of them are actually English.

Some header files are recognizes as "ASCII text", others as "ASCII C program text".

Example 5:
file * in a directory with xulrunner extracted gives a funny result on one file:

Code: Select all

libsoftokn3.chk:        data

Duh. Everything I have on my computer is data. Thunar does not recognize it as "data", but as a "chk document". No consistency = one of the programs are wrong = broken system.

Example 6:
GIMP saves by file extension but opens by magic numbers. What were they thinking???

Trond · Post by **Trond** » Thu May 24, 2007 4:44 pm

This is how it (not) works: In /usr/share/applications there should be a .desktop file for every application. The .desktop file (notice how they are classified after file extension rather than magic number or mime type, big inconsistency) should contain a list of mime types that application is able to open.

The mime type list of Xarchiver looks like this:
application/x-arj;application/arj;application/x-bzip;
application/x-bzip-compressed-tar;application/x-gzip;
application/x-rar;application/x-rar-compressed;
application/x-tar;application/x-zip;
application/x-zip-compressed;application/zip;
multipart/x-zip;application/x-7z-compressed;

Probably Geotrail uses another archiver, but the list should be similar. That's the one file types that application should open.

The correct mime type of xlsx files is application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet. Notice how that is not on the list. Still it opens in the archiver. Can you say broken? (No you can't, this not a bug it's a feature.)

WishMaster · Post by **WishMaster** » Thu May 24, 2007 5:45 pm

Well, if you use some sleazy desktop environment like GNOME and its sleazy applications you cannot blame „Linux“ for it.
With high-quality desktop environments like KDE and their apps you don't have these problems.

> The correct mime type of xlsx files
Read this post again and read it carefully: http://purebasic.fr/english/viewtopic.p ... 075#196075

Trond · Post by **Trond** » Thu May 24, 2007 6:21 pm

Well, if you use some sleazy desktop environment like GNOME and its sleazy applications you cannot blame „Linux“ for it.
With high-quality desktop environments like KDE and their apps you don't have these problems.

Sure I do, because the problem is that every program has its own rules which are better than every other program's rules.

Nik · Post by **Nik** » Thu May 24, 2007 6:25 pm

Don't start flamewars on Desktop Environmens please.
I think file format recoginition is probably b0rken by Design in every system trying to be compatible with other ones. That said, I did have a lot more problems with file formats on windows than I have now on Linux. And actually I don't care wetehr a file is ASCII English text or pure ASCII, it's text encoded in ASCII that's it. Btw. I normaly use utf8 for textfiles. And even my Emacs and Vim editors work great with it, btw those editors are great and after 37/31 years of development they are probably among the best shaped software there is.

btw: Try saving as Sstandard Excel File that should be read perfectly by OpenOffice

Rook Zimbabwe · Post by **Rook Zimbabwe** » Fri May 25, 2007 12:41 am

Well, if you use some sleazy desktop environment like GNOME and its sleazy applications you cannot blame „Linux“ for it.
With high-quality desktop environments like KDE and their apps you don't have these problems.

Oy! infighting between LINUX peeps is more bitter than the LIN/WIN or WIN/MAC bonfires... Well maybe NOT the WIN/MAC fight!!!

Psychophanta · Post by **Psychophanta** » Fri May 25, 2007 4:03 pm

In matter of file type recognition, i have never seen anything like Amiga Directory Opus environment on the Amiga platform. :roll: