[DrakkenKorin]

I tried performing a search of this board, but I kept getting errors.

if this topic has been discussed in the past, lemmie know.

our dbo has an excel file (.xls) that he wants to work on from home on his iBook. problem is, he doesn't have ms office v.x, and he doesn't wanna spend the money to purchase it.

I looked on the web and found that apple works has the ability to convert an excel spreadsheet into the apple works version of a spread sheet.

does this work well? will he be able to keep the formatting of the spreadsheet?

will keep looking...

[JKT]

If it has more than one sheet in the saved spreadsheet, IIRC, AppleWorks will not be any good.

Better alternatives are the OpenOffice.org X11 port or NeoOffice/J (a Java version of OpenOffice.org that runs natively in OSX, but is still in the process of development, so be aware). Both are free and both have good compatibility (but not 100%) with Office files.

You can find out more about both at the trinity.neooffice.org website