Re: What is best way to share gnumeric files with excel users?



On Mon, December 20, 2010 5:14 am, Scott Ballantyne wrote:
Hi John,

Hi,

I have a situation now where I need to share a spreadsheet between
unix, windows and mac users. They don't need to change it, but they do
need to be able to read it.

I see several EXCEL compatible choices in the file diagloue, but I
don't know enough to pick the best one. There is this one, which might
be good:

MS Excel (tm) 97/2000/XP & 5.0/95

Firstly, I don't see the connection between your first paragraph and the
second. Mac machines run a unix-like OS these days. Gnumeric is
available
for free on all those platforms. Why consider Excel at all?

Secondly, "MS Excel (tm) 97/2000/XP & 5.0/95" means that you get a file
that has TWO copies of the spreadsheet data, one in the more modern
97/2000/XP format (introduced in 1997), and the other in the ancient
5.0/95 format. This means that it can be opened and used with any
version
of Excel from 5.0 upwards. However the older format doesn't support all
the features that the 97/2000/XP format supports. The main gotcha is max
16384 rows instead of 65536; another is lack of Unicode support -- you
are
limited to one legacy "codepage".

I would guess that 13 years after Excel 97 was introduced there would be
very few users who would need that crutch ... do you have any such
users?
What features do you need?


Thanks so much for your email. The problem is the Mac users, which is
exacerbated by my own ignorance of the Mac platform. I am told that
installing gnumeric on the Mac is not as simple as it is on windows,
and involves installing X-windows and a lot of other stuff which they
would need only for gnumeric, and they are very reluctant to do
that. I can't say I blame them.  If this is wrong, please enlighten me
--- it would be great to get this on the "Get Gnumeric Now!" page
also.

Sorry, "Gnumeric on a Mac" is not my territory.

It would be wonderful if someone would step up to provide a simple Mac
solution.

So I would like to build the spreadsheets in gnumeric, and have them
be readable in excel. Andreas Guelzow suggested that the 97/2000/XP &
5.0/95 is the best choice since 2007 support is limited. Perhaps just
the 97/2000/XP would work, certainly no one would need the 5.0/95
format.


In that case, "97/2000/XP" is the best choice.




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