Will a webapp file open in Excel 2007 or 2003?

[Ken Puls]

I'm curious on this... I use Excel 2010, and haven't set up an environment to test this yet. Just in case anyone else has...

I've got a file shared in a Windows Live SkyDrive account. (It contains a hyperlink to my site, nothing major.)

I'm curious if the "open in Excel" button (top right) works if you're running Excel 2007, or Excel 2003...

The file is here: http://cid-f0fab0740f0f0fcf.office.l...ebAppTest.xlsx

[Juan Pablo Gonzalez]

Opens fine in Excel 2007.

[Ken Puls]

Thanks JP.

I'd expect that this will work with 2003 also, but only if the compatibility pack is installed. (Being an xlsx file.) Nice to know the 2007 part for sure though.

[maninweb]

Hi Ken,

Works well, no problems on my machine with Office 2003 & CP.

Regards :-)

[Ken Puls]

Cool, thanks Mourad. I'll spin up a VM and try the non-cp version tonight if I get time.

[Ken Puls]

Okay, so this worked sort of like I expected...

Here's the part I wasn't expecting... when you try and download with Office 2003 without the compatibility pack installed, you get the following message:

When you actually ask to download it and open it in Excel though, it tells you it was created in a newer version and asks you if you want to download the compatibility pack. (Excel 2003 SP3).

[Ken Puls]

Interesting... I uploaded an xls file to SkyDrive. When you edit it, it makes an xlsx copy in the directory to work with. So WebApp doesn't really work with the classic file types, per se, but does give you an easy route to convert if you don't have the CP to do so.

Not sure where that leaves the user who wants to go backwards though...

[XL-Dennis]

Ken,
So what You're saying is that it will work with 2003 - 2010 versions of Excel. Nice to see that Office 2003 is still supported by MSFT.

[Ken Puls]

Well, sort of Dennis.

If you are using Excel 2003, and upload your .xls file to the WebApp, it will upload. When you open the file in the WebApp, it converts it to an xlsx.

At this point the user will have both an .xls and an .xlsx file in SkyDrive. So if they are doing edits in SkyDrive, they'll be in the xlsx file.

Now, if they download the xls, I would assume it would be the original file with no edits. And if they download the xlsx and don't have the CP installed, then they can't run it.

Regardless, since the CP can be installed for Excel 2000 onwards, this issue really only need surface for a user on Office 97. Hopefully there aren't too many of them still out there.

[Jessica Kloss]

i have this question too