Opening Excel files without MS Office?

[isthisonetaken]

Hi all,

I need to open some excel files for one of my classes. I don't want to have to get MS Office though and I don't want to have to recreate the files in something like Pages. I downloaded Open Office 2 for my intel iMac, but it says I need to instal X11. I downloaded X11 and went to instal it, but it won't let me, saying that there is newer software installed on my system already. Open Office still won't open though, because it can't see that X11 is installed! Anyone have any ideas of what I can do to fix this, or what I can get to open and work on the Excel files? Preferably free? Thanks for thee help.

 

[Frisco]

Google Spreadsheets

Use Firefox

 

[clevin]

neooffice is based on openoffice, and does not require X11,
http://www.neooffice.org/
Image (too large for inline view).

btw, if you need advanced plotting function, there is no substitution for ms excel.

 

[MrSmith]

I second NeoOffice. In fact, I use nothing but. Be sure to download the newest patch as well:

http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/en/patch.php

You should register your email address, then you get a message when new patches are released.

 

[MisterMe]

btw, if you need advanced plotting function, there is no substitution for ms excel.

Actually, if you need advanced plotting functions, Excel is a very blunt instrument. There are numerous charting apps for the Mac and Windows which run rings around Excel. Many can read Excel files.

 

[isthisonetaken]

Thanks for all the help guys!

 

[clevin]

Actually, if you need advanced plotting functions, Excel is a very blunt instrument. There are numerous charting apps for the Mac and Windows which run rings around Excel. Many can read Excel files.

oops, plz list some, im doing science research, in this field, there is no good free replacement.

 

[andrew050703]

oops, plz list some, im doing science research, in this field, there is no good free replacement.

Apple's 'downloads' page has a load of freeware/shareware programs under scientific software - I mostly use openoffice (or bootcamp excel) to put my data together, then put it on a graph in "Plot 0.991"

- take a look; i'm sure there's better stuff too

 

[clevin]

Apple's 'downloads' page has a load of freeware/shareware programs under scientific software - I mostly use openoffice (or bootcamp excel) to put my data together, then put it on a graph in "Plot 0.991"

- take a look; i'm sure there's better stuff too

I have plot installed, and I played with it for several days, it has some very good features, such as function plotting, which is easier than excel, but its very hard to adjust the format of the elements in the chart, and its UI is pretty confusing too.. It might take more time for me to master it, but for now, i think excel is easier to use, and yeah, Plot is free tho

 

[rtharper]

I have plot installed, and I played with it for several days, it has some very good features, such as function plotting, which is easier than excel, but its very hard to adjust the format of the elements in the chart, and its UI is pretty confusing too.. It might take more time for me to master it, but for now, i think excel is easier to use, and yeah, Plot is free tho

I'm not sure what you all mean by plotting, but I assume of some sets of data for statistical research or the like. R (I kid you not, that's its name) is a free tool that runs on unix and does require X11 I believe. I had to use it for my CIS stats class. The syntax is very C-like and should be familiar if you know programming and math. It does the whole range of plotting and operations on sets that you could want and its highly flexible.

http://www.r-project.org/

 

[andrew050703]

I'm not sure what you all mean by plotting...

No, its a program name: 'Plot (0.991)'

Its freeware (so good), but fiddly (not so good) to use.

And it struggles to redraw when I have all 160,000 data points on my graph - maybe I need something better than my MBP

 

[clevin]

I'm not sure what you all mean by plotting, but I assume of some sets of data for statistical research or the like. R (I kid you not, that's its name) is a free tool that runs on unix and does require X11 I believe. I had to use it for my CIS stats class. The syntax is very C-like and should be familiar if you know programming and math. It does the whole range of plotting and operations on sets that you could want and its highly flexible.

http://www.r-project.org/

yep, I will give this a try too.. thanks for the info.