Can support xls?

[CodyGuo]

No description provided.

[xuri]

@CodyGuo Thanks for your issue. The legacy XLS use Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) format, it's completely different with OOXML and can't be supported by the same code. To support this feature maybe needs to evaluate.

[CodyGuo]

@xuri Thank you, waiting for your good news.

[lunny]

see https://github.com/extrame/xls

[mlh758]

@xuri The xls spec if pretty heavy duty and entirely different from reading xlsx. I think it would be reasonable to say we won't support the legacy xls format and close this and the related issues.

[stardustliu]

a conclusions yet？

[asadrajput2]

@xuri Any update yet?

[KiddoV]

Any update on this topic? I really need to read xls file instead, due to business format usage.

[zepyrshut]

see https://github.com/extrame/xls

Thank you!!!

[KiddoV]

So we have to use a totally different library for xls? Hmm.. 🤔

[zepyrshut]

So we have to use a totally different library for xls? Hmm.. 🤔

It seems that you have to use a different library. The other one is easy to use. If you are going to use it, consider that it has a incorrect master branch tagging and you will have to go get github.com/extrame/xls/xls@4a6cf263071b975a90abf74ca3e804b48243be28

[KiddoV]

The github.com/extrame/xls lib is too old now and has a lot of bugs. The biggest/critical bug I think is extrame/xls#56 that, I don't think will get fixed soon.

If this lib is not support all functionalities for XLS, maybe make a conversion function somehow to convert it to XLSX so we can use this lib in peace? :)

[mlh758]

xlsx was introduced with Microsoft office 2007 and can be read with zip + xml parsers. It supports far more rows and allows for compression.

xls is a binary format, is limited to ~65k rows, and parsing it requires an entirely separate set of tools: https://interoperability.blob.core.windows.net/files/MS-XLS/%5bMS-XLS%5d.pdf

I'd really like to know, why are you using xls instead of xlsx in 2023? Is it macro support?

[KiddoV]

I'd really like to know, why are you using xls instead of xlsx in 2023? Is it macro support?

Same on this issue's comment here: #341 (comment)
That's because my company is still using the XLS format as a default instead. Sadly! :(

[mlh758]

I really don't see this getting added to the library due to the complexity involved. Like I said, it's not a similar implementation at all.

Java has Apache POI: https://poi.apache.org/ which is probably your most complete, free option.

There's a go wrapper for libxls: https://github.com/godzie44/go-xls

Over on the C# side if you have Windows there are some free libraries that support interop to office and can do conversion. If you're not on Windows (and that's unlikely for your server, and probably a risk to install there anyway) there are some paid libraries.

There's also a Python library: https://pypi.org/project/xlrd/