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forced to 'excel' (fwd)



The recent discussion of Excel and related MS Office parts suggests
that some might find this excerpt from another list of interest.

You can download a translator for Word 6 which allows it to read Word 97
files (with the usual caveat regarding unsupported features); I believe
similar translators are also available for Excel and PowerPoint.

Unfortunately, your belief is not the reality. M$ HAS released a Excel
97 ->Excel 5.0 viewer, but the last I saw would it NOT preserve any
functions; and there is NOT any way to convert Excel Basic macros to
Excel 97. Powerpoint I don't know about. Access 97 files are a complete
loss; Access 95 can convert Access 2.0 files but Access 97 CAN'T, and
neither can convert back to Access 2.0. (even though Access 95 did NOT
add any new features and was just supposedly a straight 16bit->32bit
port) M$ has worked hard at insurring backwards IN-compatibility and
also at placing enough Office 95 preloads to force their installed
customer base to upgrade. They're following the same pattern with
Office 97 and I see no reason to believe they WON'T follow the same
path with Windows 98 unless their own customers put a stop to it (fat
chance!)

---------------------------------------------
Phil Parker pparker@twsuvm.uc.twsu.edu
Random quote for this second:
The goal of science is to build better mousetraps.
The goal of nature is to build better mice.