Re: Problem with Gnumeric Spreadsheet 1.10.14

[Jim Tarvid <tarvid ls net>]

Reinstall gnumeric.

In gnumeric, open a file in gnumeric file format.

File > Save as > File type: > MS Excel (tm) 97/2000/XP > Save

There is also a command line converter ssconvert. E.G. ssconvert foo.gnumeric foo.xls

Far too many options.

Jim

On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 5:28 AM, Hal Ashburner <hal ashburner info> wrote:

On 29/Aug/2011, at 5:38 PM, Chris Cox wrote:

Dear developers, I’m just an average computer user who decided to download the program as an alternative to MS Excel 2003. Gnumeric itself works 100% but I’ve encountered a problem as follows:-

 

1)     I’ve found that all the previous Excel worksheets saved in my docs have been converted to Gnumeric file format.

 

2)     This in itself is not a problem on my pc but when I wish to send an XLS workbook created in Excel 2003 as an email attachment, this defaults to Gnumeric XLS file. As I understand it, this would mean the recipient of the mail would have to have Gnumeric installed to be able to open the file?

 

3)     Is there a way for me to create Gnumeric files only for those spreadsheets created using the software and vice versa for MS Excel? Ie I wish to keep the formats separate from one another.

 

4)     I’ve tried uninstalling Gnumeric but when I do, the XLS files in My Docs still appear as Gnumeric flies irrespective of whether or not they are or were previously created as MS Excel files.

 

For your guidance I have the following installed:-

 

• Windows XP
• MS Office Professional Edition 2003

 

Many thanks for you kind assistance.

Hi Chris,

I think I understand what is going on here.

There are two different and distinct things we need to be aware of.

1) the file format. Gnumeric can create, read and write MS Excel compatible files with the .xls extension. eg myfile.xls

Gnumeric can also create files using its own file format, these have the .gnumeric extension eg myfile.gnumeric these are much more betterer for a bazillion reasons but you can't use it if you want excel to be able to open and read the files you're creating and modifying in gnumeric. 

2) Windows has a thing called "File Associations" this is what windows uses to know what program to start when you open a file. e.g. if you open a file called myfile.txt it launches notepad and opens the file using notepad.

With Office installed it sets default file associations for .xls to excel and .doc to Word.

These file associations are only suggestions, they can be changed and overridden. Eg if the default spreadsheet is Excel such that double clicking an .xls file launches excel you can still launch the gnumeric program and open that same file with gnumeric regardless of the file association.

I think 2 is your issue. If you look up your windows documentation on how to set file associations you can change it and it should make no difference as to whether you can open the file with Excel.

You should test this by creating an .xls file with excel, then opening it with gnumeric, then create another spreadsheet with gnumeric (being sure to save it as an excel compatible file) and checking you can open that in excel.

This way you won't have any issues with sharing files with other people unfortunate enough to still be using the vastly inferior spreadsheet from microsoft.

All the best,

Hal Ashburner

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