xls "preview" weirdness

Hi everyone, I am pretty new to Mac OS so I am probably missing something obvious, please bear with me. When I try to view a MS Excel file, Mac OS X tries to open it with TextEdit (I have neither OpenOffice or iWorks nor anything similar installed) and of course it ends up displaying only gibberish. BUT when I am looking for a .xls file in Finder, the preview on the right shows what seems to be a regular spreadsheet with columns rows and all the usual stuff (screenshot attached). How can this be? Should i be using something different from TextEdit to open the file? I tried opening it with Preview but it did not work. I have no interest in editing the xls, simply viewing it would be enough.



Thanks,

λv

 

Ah, brilliant! Thank you!