Supported MS Excel versions in Aspose.Cells in .NET

Aspose.Cells Product Family
1

Getting an error trying to open an old version of Excel with Aspose.Cells. Error thrown when creating a new Workbook(‘location_of_xls’)



An exception of type ‘Aspose.Cells.CellsException’ occurred in Aspose.Cells.dll but was not handled in user code



Additional information: This file’s format is not supported or you don’t specify a correct format.



Which versions of Excel does Aspose support?

2

Hi,


Thanks for providing some details.

Well, it looks like you are using an Excel file of some older MS Excel version which is not supported by Aspose.Cells APIs. Please note, Aspose.Cells APIs support BIFF8 or greater formats (Excel 97 - Excel 2010/2013, Excel 2016) however, your template file might be of type “Microsoft Excel 5.0/95 Workbook” or even from some earlier versions.

You can even check the version of your Excel file and handle it accordingly (so, Aspose.Cells should not open the file) with the following sample code:
e.g
Sample code:

…
string filePath = “___________”;
FileFormatInfo fileInfo = FileFormatUtil.DetectFileFormat(filePath);
if(fileInfo.FileFormatType == FileFormatType.Excel95)
{
Console.WriteLine(“File is saved as Excel 95 file format which is not supported by Aspose.Cells APIs”);
//Your code goes here.
//…
}
…

Hope, this helps a bit.

Thank you.
3

@kalick,

We recommend you to kindly try upgrading to and use our latest version of the product which now
includes support for older BIFF7 (Excel 95/5.0 - 2003 Workbook) formats with enhancements:

Also, see the document for supported input and output file formats by Aspose.Cells: