Help opening Excel spreadsheet with OpenOffice

[dmcguiney]

Hi,
I have Office 2010 which i can no longer use (or want to) as it on 4 computers which 2 recently died. I bought 2 new computers and MS has a 5 user restriction. So I have installed OOo and would like to save my files in OOo format. My problem is when I open the excel file in OOo nothing shows just a blank worksheet.
I have Version 3.4.1 Windows 7.
Thanks for any help.
Don McGuiney

[RoryOF]

If it is an .xlsx file you may have more difficulty than an .xls file; the MS Office filters have been reverse engineered and can fail with complex formatting ( and the .???x formats). If you still have access to MS Office 2010, try saving the files as .xls to see if that improves opening. Alternately you could try LibreOffice, which I understand offers better support for .???x files.

[dmcguiney]

Thanks Rory. They are xls files and haven't been able to convert using Zamzar etc. Any other thoughts? Thanks, Don

[FJCC]

Can you post an example document? There is an Upload Attachment tab just below the box where you type a response.

[RoryOF]

If Zamzar can't handle them then there may be something wrong with the stored files. As FJCC says, a sample file would let us try to find the problem/solution.

[dmcguiney]

Hi,
Yesterday after reading up on this and the recommendation of using Zamzar which I did almost all my .xls files semi converted. Instead of the regular OOo icon what I got was the base icon but with no color, just a black and white one. I tried several different files including the one attached which has just the black and white icon. Hope this doesn't confuse anyone.
Thanks,
Don

[Hagar Delest]

A 1.5 KiB file cannot be a correct .xls file. There has been a problem with the conversion, indeed.

[RoryOF]

Definitely a corrupt (truncated?) file. Have you an earlier copy?

Sometimes in transfer from one machine to another, or from an older operating system to a new, files can be truncated for mysterious reasons. This may be one such.

[Radical_Magic63]

A call to Microsoft tech support can get you 2 new keys so you can use excel on a new computer. They allow transfer as long as you tell them the computers are trashed.