So, I'm working for a company now where I'm seeing a lot of *.xls files in their directories.
I think I want to update these from *.xls to *.xlsx, but
is there any real reason why I should be doing this?
Is there a reason I should be updating from xls to xlsx?
Thank you!
Robert
.xlsx files will usually be smaller than the same file as .xls and will usually open quicker.
.xlsx files can store 1m rows of data compared to 65.5k rows in a .xls and far more columns too.
In my opinion there is little neeed to keep them as .xls unless you absolutely have to have backward compatibility with Excel 2003 or before.
Two things to keep in mind before converting them all though:
1) If other files have VBA or other connections to the .xls files this will fall over if you convert them to .xlsx without updating the code/connections.
2) If any of the .xls files contain VBA you'll need to convert them to .xlsm or .xlsb otherwise the VBA will be lost.
BSB
See: https://www.minitool.com/news/xls-vs-xlsx.html
Or just Google: reasons to conver .xls to .xlsx
Trevor Shuttleworth - Retired Excel/VBA Consultant
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Thanks for the rep.
Interestingly, the link I provided suggested you can convert from .xls to .xlsx by renaming the file extension. I really don't think that is true as the files are a different structure.
Most definitely NOT true!
BSB
@BSB: Thank you for your confirmation. I was beginning to doubt myself
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