On 27 November 2013 10:19, Bev Nicolson lumos@gmx.co.uk wrote:
It's definitely an .xml file (Excel 2003 file type apparently).
XML is a standard file type that can be used for all types of purposes, and is not an Excel file type (from 2003 that would be .xls). Excel and LibreOffice (amongst others) can export to XML, although much like exporting to CSV format you will probably lose varying amounts of the data's formatting in doing so.
Therefore there's a contradiction in your above statement. If it is an Excel 2003 document, then it's in .xls format, even though by the sound of it, it has a .xml file extension. You could try renaming it to .xls and see if LibreOffice opens it correctly (also try the "file" command I mentioned earlier). If memory serves, there used to be all sorts of ways to attack Windows systems via Office files than had incorrect file extensions so I would imagine that current versions of Office are pretty good at ignoring the extension and looking at the file contents, which might explain why the file opens better in Excel than LO (although I'd be surprised - and disappointed - if LO doesn't also pay more attention to the file content than the file name).
On the other hand, if it is genuinely an XML file then it should open fine in Firefox or a text editor. Again, anything that expects to be seeing an XML file but finds .xls content inside might get rather confused by this (eg Thunderbird as you described earlier).
I've just tried sticking some nonsense in another doc but saving it as xls and it recognises it. (Right icon on Desktop rather than vague </> which tells you nothing.) So I think the lesson here is never use .xml because it's useless for this purpose anyway. Ah well.
XML is a very useful format and you almost certainly use it regularly without knowing about it (and indeed .ods and .xlsx file formats are both heavy users of XML internally). But as a raw document format for spreadsheet data I think you're right - .xls and .ods are better (.xls is more interchangeable between systems at present, .ods is a better format in general but MS have been slow to adopt support for it which limits its usefulness - which of-course is Microsoft's intention!). Personally I don't touch .xlsx unless they're sent to me.
Mark