You installed the compatibility pack from here?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923505

Without the pack installed you should not be getting a "mesh" of characters
when you open a 2007 file in 2003.

Sounds like something else has corrupted the file.

Can you ask the creator of the 2007 file to save as 2003 and open that?

Note: even with the pack, earlier versions are limited to 256 cols and
65536 rows.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Wed, 9 Sep 2009 03:07:03 -0700, mo-jaffar
wrote:

I recently downloaded the free convertor so as i can work with excel2007
files. I still Can not open these files with out getting a mesh of
charactors. can anyone help?