Microsoft Excel or Substitute?
August 11, 2010 5:34 AM   Subscribe

Microsoft Excel substitute (Open Office seems not to work) needed to open a spreadsheet (directory of businesses) based on macros.

My wife's office bought a software directory that requires Microsoft Excel 2000 or higher to operate, due to macros, probably for searching and printing labels. I tried using Open Office (latest version) to open it, with no success (allowing all levels of macros).

When I used OO, only a blank spreadsheet showed up on the screen.

Is there a way to make OO handle this spreadsheet? If not, where can I get inexpensive copies of MS Excel (2000 or later)?

You cannot believe how angry I am because some stupid programmer used excel to program this.
posted by mbarryf to Computers & Internet (6 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
You don't say where you are, but a few public libraries offer computers that are equipped with Microsoft Office for people to use. You might take it in there and then save it in a different format. Alternatively, you could just find a friend with Office, send them the file, have them export it in a different format, and send it back to you.
posted by proj at 5:41 AM on August 11, 2010


You can also create a Google Mail account, wherein you can utilize their Google Docs feature to upload the spreadsheet and open it using their online service. It's free and offers most if not all of the Excel features you'll need.
posted by toastchee at 6:04 AM on August 11, 2010


Response by poster: It's not a problem of loading the sheet in OO. I can load the (12) sheets, and see the data. The problem lies in the "Main" sheet where macros (VBA scripts) run to display a table of contents (clickable) and then display screens to perform selections and actions.

OpenOffice's macro's (even when given full security permission) do not seem to handle this page.
posted by mbarryf at 6:29 AM on August 11, 2010


You could try the Excel viewer from Microsoft, see if that will have the functionality you need.
It says you can "Open, view, and print Excel workbooks, even if you don't have Excel installed".
It's free, so you've not lost anything by trying.
posted by SyntacticSugar at 6:34 AM on August 11, 2010


Response by poster: Thanks SyntacticSugar, but it didn't work (got my hopes up, though). The ExcelViewer doesn't handle the VBA (macros) in the spreadsheet, hence nothing is displayed.
posted by mbarryf at 2:25 PM on August 11, 2010


I don't think you are going to be able to find software that replicated Excel's macro functionality outside of Excel.

I would guess that you could find cheap used copies of Excel 2000 on ebay, but I haven't actually checked. Excel 2000 is 10 years out of date, and two subsequent versions have come out, so I would imagine that a lot of people are no longer using their original excel 2000, or excel 2003 licenses.
posted by vegetableagony at 8:53 AM on August 13, 2010


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