How to Open/View Excel 2007 files without Excel 2007 Software

If you ever get into a situation whereby you need to open/view an Excel 2007 file (.xlsx) but the computer you are using does not have Excel 2007 installed then these tricks could come in handy. This was particularly very helpful to me when I was checking my email from my friends computer and I received an Excel 2007 file as attachment that I wanted to view immediately but my friend’s computer didn’t have Office 2007 installed.

Option 1

If the computer you are using has Excel 2003 installed then you are in luck. You can just download and install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack which automatically converts the excel 2007 file and let you open, edit and save workbooks using Excel 2003.

Option 2

What if you don’t have Excel 2003 installed on the computer? Well you can download and install the Excel viewer from Microsoft which lets you open, view, and print Excel workbooks, even if you don’t have Excel installed

Option 3

You can use Open Office to view the excel files. OpenOffice.org is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more.
The same trick can be applied to Microsoft Word 2007 files too. Do you know of any other ways to do this?