What Is Xlsx Format

1. What File Type Is Xls
2. Xlsx Viewer

Files with the.xlsx extension are Microsoft Excel files that have been created using Microsoft Excel versions 2007 and later. Previous versions of Excel that were created prior to 2007 saved these spreadsheet documents in.xls format. The 2007 and later versions of Excel use the Office Open XML Format, creating the.xlsx extension. Most of the time you use the XLSX format: It's save (can't store malicious code), has the maximum number of rows and columns and is best known. XLSX is available since Excel 2007 and replaces the old XLS file type. It uses the open XML standard so which is documented well.

XLSX is well-known format for Microsoft Excel documents that was introduced by Microsoft with the release of Microsoft Office 2007. Based on structure organized according to the Open Packaging Conventions as outlined in Part 2 of the OOXML standard ECMA-376, the new format is a zip package that contains a number of XML files. The underlying structure and files can be examined by simply unzipping the .xlsx file.

Brief History

1. The 'default' file extension is XLSX. The large majority of Excel workbooks uses this format these days. Microsoft says in the Excel help text about the XLSX file format: The default XML-based file format for Excel 2007-2013. Cannot store Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macro code.
2. XLSX is a zipped, XML-based file format. Microsoft Excel 2007 and later uses XLSX as the default file format when creating a new spreadsheet. Support for loading and saving legacy XLS files is also included. XLS is the default format used with Office 97-2003. XLS is a Microsoft proprietary Binary Interchange File Format.

XLSX file format was introduced in 2007 and uses the Open XML standard adapted by Microsoft back in 2000. Previous to XLSX, the common file format used was XLS that was pure binary file format. The new file type has added advantages of small file sizes, less changes of corruption and well-formatted images representation. It was in the early 2000 when Microsoft decided to go for the change to accommodate the standard for Office Open XML. By 2007, this new file format became part of Office 2007 and is carried on in the new versions of Microsoft Office as well.

XLSX File Format Specifications

In order to see what is inside the XLSX file, just rename it to ZIP file by changing its extension and then extract it to view the constituent files of this Excel workbook. A blank workbook, when extracted to its files, has the following constituent files and folders.

[Content_Types].xml

This is the only file that is found at the base level when the zip is extracted. It lists the content types for parts within the package. All references to the XML files included in the package are referenced in this XML file.

_rels (Folder)

What File Type Is Xls

This is the Relationships folder that contains a single XML file that stores the package-level relationships. Links to the key parts of the Xlsx files are contained in this file as URIs. These URIs identify the type of relationship of each key part to the package. This includes the relationship to primary office document located as xl/workbook.xml and other parts within docProps as core and extended properties.

docProps

Xlsx Viewer

This folder contains the overall document properties. These include a set of core properties, a set of extended or application-specific properties and a thumbnail preview of the document. A blank workbook has two files in this folder namely app.xml and core.xml. The core.xml contains information like author, date created and saved, and modified. App.xml contains information about the content of the file.

xl (Folder)

This is the main folder that contains all the details about the contents of the workbook. By default, it has following folders:

• _rels
• theme
• worksheets

and following xml files:

• styles.xml
• workbook.xml

XLSX Format Example

For each Excel worksheet contained in a workbook, there is one XML file. You can find these XML files in xl/worksheets folder. All the information contained in a worksheet is organized in different sections in the XML file. Let's examine a sample worksheet from a workbook which is shown in the following image.

As can be seen, this worksheet contains contents in cells A1 through B2 and an image. In addition, cell G13 is currently the active cell in the worksheet. Now, let's examine the xl/worksheets/sheet1.xml file to see how this information is represented in the XML file. Contents of this XML file are as shown below.

1. The tab has theme color applied to it. Its mentioned in the XML file with tag following the theme id.
2. The tabSelected value is set to 1 which shows that this is the selected sheet
3. As can be seen in first image above, cell G13 in the worksheet is active cell which is also mentioned in the XML file.
4. The sheetData tab represents the data contained in the worksheet. However, you can see that the original contents of the worksheet are nowhere in this section. This is because the text is indirectly referred from 'sharedStrings' XML sheet. This linking ensures that each text is saved only once and can be referenced again in order to save space.
5. The image as can be seen is referenced by reference id 'rId2'

References

See Also

XLS stands forExcel spreadsheet. XLS is a file extension for a spreadsheet file formatcreated by Microsoft for use with Microsoft Excel. Microsoft Excel files use aproprietary format for storing Microsoft Excel documents. This file format isknown as the Binary Interchange File Format (BIFF).

XLSX is aMicrosoft Excel spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Windows, MacOS, Android and iOS. It features calculation, graphingtools, pivot tables and a macro programming language known as Visual Basic forApplications.

In this article, getto understand more details about the XLSX and XLS Microsoft files, theircapability, and other related details.

The Difference

Version

XLSX is the latest version of Microsoft Excel while XLS isthe older version of Microsoft Excel.

Main Difference

XLS is the default file format for the 2003 version of Exceland older while XLSX is the file format for versions since 2007.

Storage of Information

In both XLSX and XLS information is stored differently. XLSis based on BIFF (Binary Interchange File Format) and as such, information isdirectly stored to a binary format. On the contrary, XLSX is based on theOffice Open XML format, a file format that was derived from XML. Theinformation in an XLSX file is stored in a text file that uses XML to defineall its parameters.

Speed Performance

XLS version of the file faster than XLSX version especiallyon files that requires the use of complex formula for a large set of data.

Readability

XLS is readable by all Microsoft Excel versions while XLSXis only readable by Microsoft Excel versions 2007 and onwards.

Capability

XLS is capable of holding the spreadsheets either containingMacros or not while XLSX is not capable to support Macros.

Based on

XLS is a proprietary binary format while XLSX is based onoffice open XML format. Access alternative program.

Also Read: Difference Between Rows And Columns In Excel

Understanding The Difference Between XLS And XLSX In Tabular Form

Summary

What is the maindifference between XLS and XLSX versions of Microsoft Excel?

XLSX and XLSfiles are Microsoft Excel spreadsheets commonly used to store financial dataand to create mathematical models. These files store data in worksheets thatcontain cells arranged as a grid of rows and columns. Excel spreadsheets mayalso contain charts, mathematical functions and various kinds of cellformatting. Spreadsheets are often used in business contexts to store financialdata and to perfom mathematical computations.

The main difference between XLS and XLSX is that XLS filesuse a proprietary binary format whereas, XLSX use a newer file format known asOpen XML. Another difference is that the XLS extension is used by MicrosoftExcel 2003 and earlier whereas the XLSX extension is used by Microsoft Excel2007 and later.