As part of Microsoft's 2007 Office suite of products another open XML document type was introduced. This time in the Excel sphere, Excel is known world wide. It is a powerful tool you can use to create and format spreadsheets, graphs, do complex maths and much more. You are able to create diverse spreadsheets with multiple workbooks, formulae, and various data sources. Files can be saved in the XLSX format, which is based on the Open XML format and uses ZIP compression for smaller file sizes.
XLSX improves file and data management and data recovery. XLSX extends what is possible with the binary files of earlier versions. Any application that supports XML can access and work with data in the new file format. The application does not need to be a Microsoft product it can be any application. Users can also use standard transformations to extract or repurpose the data. In addition, security concerns are drastically reduced because the information is stored in XML, which is essentially plain text. Thus, the data can pass through corporate firewalls without hindrance.
Associated programs
Microsoft Excel 2007 OpenOffice OxygenOffice Progessional (Linux)
The .txt file extension is one of the most ubiquitous file types. The file generally consists of plain text only and contains no formatting. Almost any application that can handle text can open a .txt file. As a result this format remains popular due to its support across all platforms and Operating Systems. The file type is one of the oldest file types in existence with its origins tracing back to the first computers.
A .txt file normally uses a basic character set which contains letters, numbers and symbols. A typical example of this would be the ASCII character set. The main alternative to ASCII is Unicode. Unicode is a rival format for text files. A plain text file should only contain several non-printable charaters such as new lines, tab and form feed.
