Subject: Re: MS Excel file format

From: [email-masked] (David P.C. Wollmann)
Date: Thu, 07 Aug 1997 21:16:39 GMT

Andreas,

Microsoft typically do not reveal their file formats, and have even forced
the removal of file format information from some online sites. Have you
considered using ODBC from a VB or C++ program to connect to Excel files?

David Wollmann
DST Data Conversion

On Thu, 7 Aug 1997 16:09:28 +0200, [email-masked] wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Where can I fond Information concerning the file format used by MS Excel?
>How do they store Integers, floats etc.?
>
>I searched at http://www.microsoft.com, but I couldn't find useful 
>Information.
>
>Thanks a lot.
>
>Andreas
>[email-masked]
>

---

From: [email-masked] (David P.C. Wollmann)
Date: Fri, 08 Aug 1997 16:32:45 GMT

Anreas,

Take a look at: http://www.openlink.co.uk/

I'm not sure if they offer an Excel driver or not, but it's worth a look.

You might check to see if Microsoft FoxPro UNIX 2.6 includes a UNIX ODBC
driver for Excel.

David

On Fri, 8 Aug 1997 13:35:42 +0200, [email-masked] wrote:

>David,
>
>We're using UNIX and have to read Excel files.
>VB and VC won't work on our machines.
>
>On Thu, 7 Aug 1997, David P.C. Wollmann wrote:
>
>> Andreas,
>>

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From: [email-masked] (Don Wells)
Date: 11 Aug 1997 01:36:09 GMT

The Excel format is described in "Essential Books on File Formats", a
CD-ROM distributed by Dr.Dobb's which contains the text of six books.
The text of one of these books, "File Formats" by Allen G. Taylor,
contains this chapter: "CHAPTER 2: MICROSOFT EXCEL FILE FORMAT
Microsoft Excel is a popular spreadsheet.  It uses a file format
called BIFF (Binary File Format).  There are many types of BIFF
records.  Each has a 4 byte header.  The first two bytes are an opcode
that specifies the record type.  The second two bytes specify record
length.  Header values are stored in byte-reversed form (less
significant byte first).  The rest of the record is the data itself
(Figure 2-1).."

However, BIFF is not your only option! When you are in Excel you can
use the "SaveAs" command in the "File" menus of commands to write your
spreadsheet in a variety of different formats. For example, you can
write your data as a "WK1" file, the ancient Lotus 1-2-3 format which
is well documented in various places. Alternatively, write a "DIF"
file, which is plain ASCII, is also well documented and is easy to
read and write with simple programs. 

--
  Donald C. Wells         Associate Scientist         [email-masked]
                    http://fits.cv.nrao.edu/~dwells
  National Radio Astronomy Observatory                +1-804-296-0277
  520 Edgemont Road,   Charlottesville, Virginia       22903-2475 USA

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From: "Helder M. Vieira" <[email-masked]>
Date: 12 Aug 1997 15:47:09 GMT

Microsoft published several books which included some file formats.
I once bought one of those books, named "Excel Software Development Kit"
(Microsoft Press,1993).
It described BIFF format as used by Excel 4, and included software disks.
I don't know if Microsoft has published data on later versions of Excel.