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Take an Excel file and change the extension to .zip, then extract the contents. You will see that it is a collection of XML files. Therefore it should be reason

Take an Excel file and change the extension to .zip, then extract the contents. You will see that it is a collection of XML files. Therefore it should be reasonable to conclude that this approach can work for Excel sized datasets. However it is not particularly readable/diff-able if this is part of your use case.

unnouinceput 5y ago
Correction: the new xlsx is a zip file, the old xls format is true binary.
- deleted 5y ago
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- dtparr 5y ago
  To be fair, xlsx came out with Office 2007, so it's not exactly 'new' anymore. Perhaps at this point it's reasonable for 'excel file' to mean the one that's been the default for 14 years?
  - mavhc 5y ago
    So not the one the uk used to track covid infections, sigh.
  - shakna 5y ago
    The xlsx document is based on the OpenDocument format, which actually came out in '05, so it's a wee bit older than that.
- meepmorp 5y ago
  Do you mean the OLE-based format, or the really old one?
ectopod 5y ago
Excel actually defines a simple XML-based alternative to CSV: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel#XML_Spreadsheet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel#XML_Spreadshee...
- deleted 5y ago
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anigbrowl 5y ago
That's useful to know.