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12 Aug 2007
Read XML file by older versions of Excel
One of my clients was recently requested by her auditor to transfer some financial data to her from an application written by me. The application already has a function to export those data in XML format. However, she wanted it to convert it to Excel format before sending to the auditor.  She was not sure her auditor's Excel version.

Here is the solution that I told her.  Open the XML file by Excel 2003 or 2007 (earlier version might have problem). Excel will show the following dialog box.

Select open the file as an XML list.  If there is another dialog box asking for schema, click OK to accept the default.  The xml file should be displayed in a spread sheet format.

To convert this file to Excel format readable by earlier versions of Excel, you can save the file as "Microsoft Excel 97 - 2003" format using the "Save as type" selection box.