Dave Peterson wrote...
....
Lots of people recommend that xl2k or higher is the minimum version of
excel
that they would use.
....

Having used XL8/97 for 8 years, XL9/2K for 3 and XL10/2002 and
XL11/2003 for a few months, I have to say that XL8/97 does almost
everything the later versions do except for pivot tables, OLAP, file
import and VBA6. That said, I find XL8/97's old WinHelp help system
MUCH BETTER than the 'help' systems in the more recent versions. So
much so that I've kept the XL8/97 .HLP files and use them rather than
the slow & klunky .CHM files from the newer versions.