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Summary
Name Microsoft Excel 97 Workbook (xls)
Version 8
Other names Microsoft Excel Workbook (97-2000)
Identifiers MIME:  application/vnd.ms-excel
Apple Uniform Type Identifier:  com.microsoft.excel.xls
PUID:  fmt/61
Family  
Classification Spreadsheet
Disclosure None
Description The Binary Interchange File Format (BIFF) is a spreadsheet file format developed by Microsoft. BIFF 8 is a native file format of Microsoft Excel 97. The format is proprietary and Microsoft does not make details of its structure public. The information here is derived primarily from OpenOffice.org's reverse-engineered documentation of the format and should not therefore be regarded as definitive. BIFF 8 is based on Microsoft’s generic OLE2 Compound Document Format. An Excel workbook is stored as a ‘Book’ stream within a Compound Document Format file. The Book stream comprises a Workbook Globals Substream, containing a Beginning of File (BOF) record, the Workbook global records, and terminated by an End of File (EOF) record. This is followed by one or more Worksheet substreams, containing a Beginning of File (BOF) record, the worksheet records, and terminated by an End of File (EOF) record. The format remained unchanged with the release of Excel 2000.
Orientation Binary
Byte order Little-endian (Intel)
Related file formats Has priority over OLE2 Compound Document Format  
Is previous version of Microsoft Excel 2000-2003 Workbook (xls) (8X)
Is subsequent version of Microsoft Excel 95 Workbook (xls) (7)
Is subtype of OLE2 Compound Document Format  
Technical Environment  
Released  
Supported until  
Format Risk  
Developed by None.
Supported by None.
Source Digital Preservation Department / The National Archives
Source date 11 Mar 2005
Source description  
Last updated 02 Aug 2005
Note  
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