odt file to ms xp file

friend uses office xp, he’s not on internet so no chance of virus from it, recently sent him a libre office calc file complete with colour coded formatting, sent on usb, he’s having problems opening it, I tried saving the file as office 97 - 2003 .xls file, when he tries to open it it says ‘no file found’ clicking ok gives ‘no file found’ again clicking ok says ms cannot calculate a formula, this is a circular reference to a cell that has yet to be filled in so clicking ok should open the file which it does but there is no colour coded formatting, even the date column is just a series of numbers, I have sent the file as a calc file but xp xl can’t open it, can anybody please advise us on saving this file complete with colour code formatting, all help and advice appreciated

Upload the file - your description is a mixture of various problems, eg, a circular reference got nothing to do with color formatting and a no file found error is yet another issue.