[X-Newbies] Re: RE:.xls

[Charles Martin]

> From: Rob Griffiths <robg at macosxhints.com>
> I would love to find a replacement for Excel ... but I've yet to find
> something that will handle the worksheets I use on a daily basis.

But I think you need to recognise that you're something of an exception.

95% or better of all the Word and Excel documents people receive were  
created by people who are just barely functional with the most basic  
featureset of those programs. In my experience, greater than 95% of  
the word documents I receive could have been sent as plain text with  
no change of appearance. The same goes for Excel Worksheets -- apart  
from the occasional bit of formatting (like bold, italic or some  
fancy font they have that I don't), nothing changes in 95%+ of the  
worksheets I get -- and I've opened many of them in Excel proper just  
to be sure of this. This is but one of the many reasons to hate  
Microsoft.

You make an excellent point that COMPLEX Excel documents really need  
Excel or something closer to it than, say, Appleworks in order to be  
read as intended, but of course at that point I generally insist on  
PDF anyway. :)

For basic word and excel files, however, AppleWorks/NeoOffice/ 
OpenOffice/ThinkFree Office/icExcel/Mariner Calc et al are perfectly  
usable and acceptable greater than 95% of the time.

Cheers
Chas