linux + Read xls Doc from linux

Question

I am not sure if it possible, but I will try this question

Maybe there are some Linux tools that can translate windows doc.xls format to Linux format?

The target is to transfer xls doc from XP to Linux (5.1 redhat) and read the xls doc from the Linux by the usual linux command as more/cat

Answer 1

OpenOffice has a headless operation mode that listens to a specified port for converts. This is a good way to handle documents if you don't have access to say, Micros*ft Excel.

/opt/openoffice.org2.4/program/soffice.bin -headless accept=socket,host=myhost,port=8100,tcpNoDelay=1;urp;

You might want to check OpenOffice's documentation for usage.

Also, found this nifty tool, xls2csv

Answer 2

The proper phrase would be "to convert xls file into plain text" so that it can be read by using cat, less etc.

The best you can do is, save the xls document into csv format from File -> Save As.

This csv file contains comma separated columns from the xls document. This file can be read by using linux text utilities.

Answer 3

Perl has a module Spreadsheet::ParseExcel. You can extract data and more from xls-files. A little example script is here: http://www.devdaily.com/blog/post/perl/perl-program-parse-microsoft-excel-xls-files