Open xml sdk for excel 2003

Is it possible to read the xml data or xml format of excel 2003 in open xml. Is there anyway we can read excel 2003 in 2007. We can ask customers to save excel 2003 in any format 开发者_运维知识库but we cannot ask them to store in 2007 .

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No, you cannot read excel 2003 as Open XML since it is not stored as XML, but is stored in a proprietary binary file format called Binary Interchange File Format (BIFF). You can save from 2007 to a 2003 format, but you cannot do the opposite. I asked a similar question here.

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You can standardize on Office Open XML and ask all customers to save in the 2007 format. From Excel 2003 you can save to Excel 2007 format as long as you have the compatibility pack installed.

Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 file formats

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/support/microsoft-office-compatibility-pack-for-word-excel-and-powerpoint-2007-file-formats-HA010168676.aspx

It's common to have this installed because they'd need it to read any .docx or .xlsx files they'd received.