Good point. XML with XSLT will be (should be) the default in future. It
should work in Excel 2002+ (although I admit to never having done it
myself<vbg).

--

HTH

Bob Phillips
... looking out across Poole Harbour to the Purbecks
(remove nothere from the email address if mailing direct)

"Steve Garman" wrote in message
...
Theoretically, XML might be a possibility but I wouldn't like to try it
myself.

Bob Phillips wrote:
No, a text file doesn't hold all the detail about formatting. That is
partly
why Excel files are much bigger than text files, it contains that
formatting
data within it.

There is a Rich Text Format file type (RTF), which holds some formatting
details when opened in Word, but I haven't tried opening one of those in
Excel, but it won't do what you want.