Chaos

It was chaos in 1997 when Excel 97 introduced a new file format. Back then, there were three file types:
Excel 95 file type
Excel 97 file type
Hybrid which included both Excel 95 & Excel 97 together.
All three file types had an .xls extension.

In 2007, the new file types can be .xlsx, .xlsb, .xlsm. Immediately, the person with Excel 2003 knows that they have something that they can not deal with.

Just this morning, one of my clients (who are not upgrading), sent me a panic e-mail with a .xlsx attachment that they had received from a customer. The manager told the person to drive to Kinkos where the rental computers would have the new version of Excel. Since I have both versions here, I opened it and converted it for them. This “deer in the headlights” reaction is typical, though. There are two things that could have prevented it:
a) The recipient could have downloaded the free utility to open .xlsx files, although apparently they had no clue that it existed.
b) The sender could have saved the file as an .xls file from within Excel 2007. Although, in this case, I am sure the customer assumed that (1) The customer is always right, and (2) it is not their problem that the vendor is not as technologically advanced as the customer and hasn’t upgraded yet.

I wonder if the people with Excel 2007 have a technology chip on their shoulder and don’t want to save as Excel 2003 files just to show off that they are brave enough to upgrade? Certainly, if it a service provider is sending a file to his customers, he owes it to them to offer the file in either .xls or .xlsx versions. However, if it is the customer sending the file to a vendor, I can see where the reaction of “you should be able to deal with this” would creep in.

Of course, none of these options are relevant for the person with more than 256 columns or > 65,536 rows. The free converter will truncate the extra columns or rows. In this case, the sender is going to have to do a bit of a sell job. “Look, you would benefit from having the new Excel – you will be able to get the entire model on one worksheet, greatly improving the charts and analysis. Run over to the office supply store and buy the Home edition for 125 bucks just to get these extra rows. It is well worth it.”

By the way, customers say they won’t upgrade because they fear the loss of the menu and toolbars. Two great products now deal with this:
http://www.mrexcel.com/classicexcelmenu.html