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I'm having trouble reading a .xls file using the ExcelJS library. No problems reading .xlsx files. I used to use only the xlsx js library and did not have any issues reading .xls files.

I was under the impression ExcelJS included xlsx library so my assumption was that reading .xls would work as expected.

So my question is...can I convert .xls to .xlsx using exceljs (I cannot require a user to convert the file themselves in excel) or can I somehow implement the unzip from xlsx js library and incorporate it in the exceljs source code to make it possible?

I switched to exceljs because it seemed more straightforward when it comes to creating excel files.

Also, I'm not sure if it makes a difference, but the xlsx project I had reading .xls files was on a PC and currently I'm coding this new project on a Mac.

Thanks All

sychordCoder
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  • Please perform at least some bare-minimum-effort research before posting, in accordance with our guidelines on [ask]. This question is a duplicate of [How to read from .xls file using exceljs?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58392035/how-to-read-from-xls-file-using-exceljs) – esqew Mar 06 '22 at 20:39
  • @esqew thanks but that article just says you can’t. You clearly didn’t read through my entire question. – sychordCoder Mar 06 '22 at 20:46

1 Answers1

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XLS is a 'closed' legacy Microsoft binary format, though people have developed plenty of tools to manipulate them. You can open an XLSX file in a text editor - it's text. Microsoft's goal was to make using the Excel and Word formats easier to integrate by switching to XML.

It would take an interesting amount of code on the front end to deal with XLS files. If you find a library, the creator will likely have a paid license program. If you can't find a library, maybe you can locate a web service (or create one) that can convert between the two formats on the server side.

Xavier J
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