http://qs1969.pair.com?node_id=1220026


in reply to Re: old style xls module
in thread old style xls module

You could also just generate a CSV file. That works fine in lots of versions of Excel. :)

There are a lot of problems i used to face when creating CSV/TDF files for Excel. I first encountered this problem dealing with leading zeros and stock numbers that looked like 1E123. Below find a csv file that documents some of them.

="--------------------" ="leading equals fixes these" "something excell may think as a date" ,="2012-12-12" ,"2012-12-12" ,="2/4" ,"2/4" "something excell may think is a number" ,="1e123" ,"1e123" "leading zeros" ,="00001" ,"00001" "leading equals" ,="=x" ,"=x" "there are more that ive forgotten" ="--------------------" ="leading equals busts these" "commas in string" ,"created,2016-06-19-03-02-26" ,="created,2016-06-19-03-02-26" "long strings" ,"|001-----0|010-----0|020-----0|030-----0|040-----0|050-----0|060---- +-0|070-----0|080-----0|090-----0|101-----0|110-----0|120-----0|130--- +--0|140-----0|150-----0|160-----0|170-----0|180-----0|190-----0|201-- +---0|210-----0|220-----0|230-----0|240-----0|250-----0|260-----0|270- +----0|280-----0|290-----0" ,="|001-----0|010-----0|020-----0|030-----0|040-----0|050-----0|060--- +--0|070-----0|080-----0|090-----0|101-----0|110-----0|120-----0|130-- +---0|140-----0|150-----0|160-----0|170-----0|180-----0|190-----0|201- +----0|210-----0|220-----0|230-----0|240-----0|250-----0|260-----0|270 +-----0|280-----0|290-----0" "so everthing is output as =""..."" that does not have a comma or is l +ong" "you can still perform arithmatic on a =""..."" when it is a number"
As you can see i used what i called the "literal function" (="...") to deal with many of them.