Test files › Office documents › legacy-workbook.xls
Sample XLS file (legacy workbook)
A real legacy Excel 97-2003 workbook: BIFF8 records inside an OLE2 compound file, with two sheets, numbers, and text held in a shared string table.
↓ Download legacy-workbook.xls| Filename | legacy-workbook.xls |
| Format | XLS |
| Size | 3.5 KB (3,584 bytes) |
| MIME type | application/vnd.ms-excel |
| SHA-256 | e4ddabb0ba6f10493b909d5f3be09e70c94f622d6b97c9d12664c6527f33294e |
What this file catchesCode that treats .xls and .xlsx as the same thing. They share nothing structurally - .xlsx is a ZIP of XML starting with PK, .xls is an OLE2 compound document starting with D0 CF 11 E0, and a reader for one cannot open the other. Also catches importers that only accept the modern format, and signature checks that map the OLE2 magic to Word. Opens in Excel, LibreOffice, xlrd and pandas.
Download & verify
curl -fsSL -o "legacy-workbook.xls" "https://files.hexaqa.com/office/legacy-workbook.xls"
curl -fsSL "https://files.hexaqa.com/office/legacy-workbook.xls" | sha256sum
# expect: e4ddabb0ba6f10493b909d5f3be09e70c94f622d6b97c9d12664c6527f33294e