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Loading xls or xlsx files

Hi All,

While loading xls files, we use biff and while loading xlsx files, we use ooxml.

Is there a common format available for loading both xls and xlsx files

7 Replies
robert_mika
Master III

Look here for explanation:

biff Vs. ooxml

petter
Partner - Champion III

When the files have the extension XLS or XLSX they have to be in that particular format BIFF or OOXML. So they go together always. You can't have a file name .XLS and not store it in BIFF-format. If you do it will be invalid/corrupt.

But you can translate your XLS-files into XLSX and then they turn from BIFF into OOXML and vice versa - the latter with the risk of losing functionality but probably not any data.

marcus_sommer

If you have influence to the file-fomat you should avoid xlsx as format then it's far away from optimized and loading from these files is very slow compared to xls or txt/csv-files.

To handle different file-formats within a folder you could use filelist in a loop: Loops in the Script.

- Marcus

Not applicable
Author

Hi Asma,

You can use this function:

LET vPath = 'C:\user\test\documents\teste.xls';

LET vExtension = Mid('$(vPath)', Index('$(vPath)', '.xls'), len('$(vPath)'));

Not applicable
Author

Why is .xlsx slower than .xls?

marcus_sommer

xls is a proprietary binary file-format and xlsx is an "open" xml file-format which is more structured and had more overhead for it. In my experience xlsx needs significantly longer run-times as xls whereby if possible I avoid both formats and store the data as simple txt-files.

- Marcus

Not applicable
Author

Ah gotcha, thank you!