Office file formats

[damo12]

If I receive an email attachment that has the file extension .doc, does this mean that the file was created and can, therefore, by opened with any program that will open a document (.doc) file, that runs on a Windows platform? e.g. Word Pad or Writer (OpenOffice). If so, does this imply that the file extension (.xls) was created using Microsoft Excel or that it could have been created and can be opened using any program that can utilise this file extension? e.g. Calc (OpenOffice).

[mandrke]

most probably, a file with extension .doc only means that it is a Microsoft Word compatible file but most word processors (even those on Mac OS X and Linux etc) can read/write word files as an act of compatibility with office. same thing with .xls

[phkninja]

If the file is of .doc more than likely you can open it with MS word but not wordpad.

If you dont want to edit the file you can download MS wordviewer instead of installing the whole office suite. Or you can download Open Office (http://www.openoffice.org) as it too will open MS Office file formats.

Finally if you want to edit the files but dont want a high memory footprint (don't want to use too much HD space) download portable open office (http://portableapps.com/apps/office/openoffice_portable) its designed to run on 65MB on a usb drive or you could download portable abiword (http://portableapps.com/apps/office/abiword_portable) which is only a word processor (allowing MS Word file formats to be edited) as its designed to use 6.3MB on a usb drive.

P.S. The reason open office is so large is because it is a total replacement for MS Office, replacing MS Word (Open Office Writer), MS Excel (Open Office Calc), MS Access (Open Office Base) etc.

Edited December 26, 2006 by phkninja