A hilarious computer file problem

[Night Monkey]

Hey guys. I wonder if anyone would know how to open a file made on "Microsoft Office Excel for Macintosh Version 1.X" in any coherent way?

I know, lol.

[lesser_minion]

That's pretty ancient.

What happens when you try to open it normally?

[randman22222]

Erm? Find an emulator for Macintosh 1.x?

[lesser_minion]

I'm assuming that it's either a very old version of the file format which might just work, or it will ask you to figure out how to import the data. Either way, I'm not sure what sort of problem is likely with such an old file.

[Serpentine]

I have a similar problem with a piece of art from high school, made on an old version of Photoshop

[Siosilvar]

Chances are? You don't.

Microsoft says:

If you do not have Excel version 1.x, but you do have access to either Excel 3.0 or Excel 4.0, follow these steps:

1. Open the file in either Excel 3.0 or Excel 4.0.
2. On the File menu, click Save As.
3. Save the file in Normal format.

You should now be able to open the file up in Excel 5.0, Excel 97, or Excel 98.

[lesser_minion]

I have a similar problem with a piece of art from high school, made on an old version of Photoshop

Do you know what the file format was called?

Hey guys. I wonder if anyone would know how to open a file made on "Microsoft Office Excel for Macintosh Version 1.X" in any coherent way?

I know, lol.

If you really need the information, you might be able to force your computer to open the spreadsheet in a text editor and see if you can find the printable characters.

I have no idea whether or not it would work, and it would take hours to do, however.

Aside from that, you might have to try to find the original software and see if you can export it to something more modern (or less - CSV and tab-separated files are still used today).

[Jack Squat]

There should be converters out there - a quick Google should turn one up.

[bluewind95]

You can try Open Office, I guess...? I know mine opens formats that don't even come in the list of formats it can save in. Like .docx, though that's new. But still... since it has so many formats it can read, perhaps one may be able to open that file coherently?

[lesser_minion]

There should be converters out there - a quick Google should turn one up.

The file format is older than I am. It's a 23-year old file format that is not something simple like CSV or tab-separated values.

My Google-fu is not really up to the task, but the Microsoft KB article suggests that it's not going to happen.

I don't see OpenOffice handling it, but you could always have a look at Gnumeric or KOffice.

I wouldn't be surprised if at least one of them could import files from Excel 1.x