Working with Excel 95 files

May 2, 2006 9:58 AM

How can I convert Excel 95 to at least '97 when uploaded to a server (iis) or...

do you know of a way to grab the info out of excel 95 and insert it into SQL (everything I found only works with '97 or newer).

posted by Mick to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Read them in using POI, then write straight to your database.
posted by ny_scotsman at 10:03 AM on May 2, 2006

POI only seems to work with 97 and never. Excel 95 is the stumbling block I'm having.
posted by Mick at 10:24 AM on May 2, 2006

Ah, you're right, sorry about that. You could try ssconvert which is part of Gnumeric (which, I believe, has a Win32 build). I'm pretty sure Gnumeric (and so ssconvert) read XL95.
posted by ny_scotsman at 10:36 AM on May 2, 2006

Not sure if this fits with what your trying to do or not but, I've pulled data out of Excel 95 files and inserted it into SQL Server databases with SQL's Data Transformation Services
posted by srw12 at 10:51 AM on May 2, 2006

Excel 2003 still reads '95 files. You can easily automate Excel 97 upwards (OLE) from VB/VBA/VB.NET to either save the workbooks in a later format (for extraction via your existing methods) or just insert the data into SQL Server.

I'm happy to throw an example together (don't start my new job until next week...).
posted by NailsTheCat at 11:12 AM on May 2, 2006

Hey NailsTheCat, you don't have an email in your profile so, if your interested in throwing together a little something (for pay), please drop me a note at my profile email address.
posted by Mick at 11:28 AM on May 2, 2006

Hey Mick, I've dropped you an email. And I updated my profile to include an email address to boot - I'm just overly spam warey.
posted by NailsTheCat at 12:08 PM on May 2, 2006