Part IV: Managing and Analyzing Data
Importing from a file
This section describes the file types that Excel can open directly, using the File ➪ Open
command. Figure 25.1 shows the list of file filter options that you can specify in the Open
dialog box.
FIGURE 25.1
Filtering by file extension in the Open dialog box
Spreadsheet file formats
In addition to the current file formats (XLSX, XLSM, XLSB, XLTX, XLTM, and XLAM), Excel
2019 can open workbook files from all previous versions of Excel:
XLS: Binary files created by Excel 4, Excel 95, Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, and
Excel 2003
XLM: Binary files that contain Excel 4 macros (no data)
XLT: Binary files for an Excel template
XLA: Binary files for an Excel add-in
Excel can also open ODS files, the OpenDocument spreadsheet format, created by other
spreadsheet products. ODS files are produced by a variety of “open” software programs,
including Google Sheets, Apache OpenOffice, LibreOffice, and several others.
Database file formats
Excel 2019 can open the following database file formats:
