Detecting old excel file formats

Aspose.Cells Product Family
1
With this method:

Dim f As Aspose.Cells.FileFormatInfo = Aspose.Cells.FileFormatUtil.DetectFileFormat("really_old.xls")

I am able to detect

f.FileFormatType = FileFormatType.Excel95

I realize your product info says you support "Excel 97/2000/XP/2003/2007/2010/2013"

Is there any way to access the contents of these older format spreadsheets? Or is simply detecting the format as far as Aspose.Cells can go?

Thank you.
2

Hi Jeff,


Thank you for contacting Aspose support.

Other than the file format, Aspose.Cells API can also detect the application version code corresponding to the spreadsheet format. Please review the below mentioned article for your reference and let us know if you have further concerns.

3
Hi,

Jeff B:
Is there any way to access the contents of these older format spreadsheets? Or is simply detecting the format as far as Aspose.Cells can go?

For your information, Aspose.Cells supports BIFF8 or greater formats (Excel 97 - Excel 2010/2013), so you cannot access the contents of Excel 95 file format.

As a workaround, you may try the following steps to work with the file for Aspose.Cells product, so that Aspose.Cells could open/process the file fine, there is no alternative I am afraid:
e.g
Open your template file into MS Excel (e.g..,Ms Excel 2003 or 2007).
Save the file As "Microsoft Office Excel Workbook".
Now you can use Aspose.Cells to open/manipulate the file for your requirements, it will work fine.

Thank you.