Libre sheet incompatible with Excel

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#1

I have a spreadsheet that I created in Libre on a laptop with an Ubuntu OS. It contains auto-calculated scores. I occasionally save a copy on USB, transfer to a server, and open (usually to view only) on a Windows PC in Excel. A few months ago, I modified my document on Excel on the Windows PC (added conditional formatting on one of the sheets), and then saved a copy over to the Ubuntu laptop. I’ve since been updating my document on the Ubuntu OS laptop in Libre, where it still looks just fine. However, ever since those conditional formatting modifications, every time I save a copy over to view in Excel on my Windows computer, this happens:

  • Excel appears to open twice when I try to access the document, then gives me an error message - found a problem with the content, do you want us to recover? I click yes.
  • after recovery, the formatting is messed up - column widths are wrong, some of the column heading text on merged cells is missing.
  • I click “Enable editing” and Excel says openings and repairing again.
  • At some point, it gives me a “Name conflict” error box (Name cannot be the same as a built-in name. Old name: Print_Area_0).

I have tried saving the file on the Ubuntu laptop within Libre in many different types of formats, and I have stripped conditional formatting off the file in Libre, and every time I then try to open it on my Windows PC in Excel, it still requires repair and doesn’t display properly. What happened? How do I fix this? Thanks.

#2

“A few months ago, I modified my document on Excel”

Can’t tell without an actual sample, but I might wager that it would have worked if, instead, you had modified the document in LibreOffice first, saved it in native format (.ods), and then exported it in .xls to the other computer running Excel.

#3

You may be interested in Tutorial - Differences between Microsoft and AOO/LO files • Apache OpenOffice Community Forum.

#4

Yeah, I could not figure out how to do it in Libre. I was under the impression they were compatible, which I now see is not entirely the case…

#5

Nitpick: the suite is called LibreOffice and the spreadsheet application Calc. So LibreOffice Calc or just Calc but not Libre or Libre sheet…

#6

Anyway, what you describe is a bug. It should be reported, with a sample document attached, that LibreOffice saves in such a way that it considered corrupted by Excel. OTOH, you don’t provide details about LO version, so maybe it’s something already fixed in a later version?

#7

Note: There is NOT (never was and never will be) 100% compatibility between the different file formats, and the different applications.

You always will lost some formatting properties or maybe some functionality (or maybe the whole file!!!) when you cross-edit a document with different applications.

#8

In addition:


[How to open files from MS-Office 2007 or 2010 (.DOCX, .XLSX,...)?](https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Faq/General/118)
#9

Thank you.

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