As part of my job, I need to download photos from a government office,
but they keep e-mailing them to me in a format that my G4 Mac v.10.3.6
interprets as an MS Excel document (or more recently as a HexEdit
document.) Changing the suffix to .gif or .jpg doesn't help.

They are not spreadsheets though, so when Excel opens them, they just
show up as page of scrambled numbers. They are supposed to be photos
of people. The office that is sending these to me says that they
don't know what the problem is. I can't import them into Photoshop.

Trying to open them on the Mac's PC emulator doesn't help.

Can anyone help?

Thanks,
Greg

These files can be opened on a PC and resaved with the suffix changed
to .jpg , then when they're mailed back to me I can open them on my
Mac.
But how can I open them without going through a PC?