Scalabium: xls/xlsx files without MS Excel

How to view the xls file without installed MS Excel

	Tweet

In this small article I want to describe how you may view the any xls file on computer where MS Excel application is not installed.

Sometimes you have the xls-file (worbook or spreadsheet) and want to view this file on another computer but there the MS Excel is not installed.
You don't have the Excel. How do you open it? You have a few ways to view this file anyway.

1. convert file to another format

If you have the another computer with installed MS Excel, you may open this xls-file and save as comma-separated text file (CSV) or html-file. So such converted file you can open on any computer.

Generally there are a lot of tools to export/convert the MS Excel file to another file format (CSV, fixed length text file, HTML, XML etc). For example:

MS Excel from Microsoft Office
Excel File Viewer

When file converted, you may transfer this file to computer without MS Excel and open in associated application. For example, CSV or fixed length text in NotePad, html/xml in default browser etc.

2. use third-party file viewers

You may download and install another viewers/tools. For example, the next tools allows to open the xls-file:

Microsoft Excel Viewer
Excel File Viewer from Scalabium Software
spreadsheet viewer from Open Office
KeyView
Fast Document Viewer from Scalabium Software

Please note that most tools are very easy in use and don't require the any special setup/install. Just run and view the spreadsheet/workbook.

Also most tools (listed above) allow to save the document to another format (CSV, HTML, XML, SPSS, Lotus 1-2-3, Quattro Pro etc), copy to clipboard, print and more.

Additionally the extended tools allows to extract the source code for VBA-scripts, to view the original BIFF-records and internal streams in document structure, to view the document properties (author, subject, last modification date etc), to recover the corrupted xls-file