I think that the best you can do is to ask the sender to save as an xl95
workbook. But since each new version of excel adds something new, you may not
see everything that the user did.

If you only want to see the workbook (not change):

You may want to try the free viewer from MS.

The free viewer (no changes allowed) from Microsoft:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/of...347961033.aspx

and the older version if you can't run the one above:

http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...S/xlViewer.exe
(One line in your browser)

or...

Maybe a free spreadsheet program would work for you:
http://www.openoffice.org, a 60-65 meg download or a CD


======
And don't forget eBay. You may be able to find a copy of xl2000 pretty cheap.
There are some things that xl2k does nicer than xl97, so you may not want to
look at xl97.



rmmech wrote:

I am using Microsoft Office for windows 95. When I try to open excel files
that I receive from other parties I usually get the following
error..."filename".xls: file format is not valid. Can I download an update
that will allow me to open these excel files?

--

Dave Peterson