How to open old .xls Excel files on a Mac
.xls is the binary format Excel used before 2007, and it is still everywhere: bank exports, accounting software, government data, archives. Modern Mac apps handle it less gracefully than .xlsx. Numbers, for example, can refuse some files with a message that the document was created with an unsupported version of Excel.
Here is how to open an .xls file on a Mac for free, how to convert it to the modern .xlsx format, and what to do when the file is not really an .xls at all.
Updated
Option 1: open it in Foglio and save as xlsx
Foglio is a free, open-source spreadsheet app for the Mac. It reads .xls files with calamine, a fast Rust library for legacy Excel formats, and also opens binary .xlsb files.
- Download Foglio and drag it to Applications.
- Right-click the
.xlsfile and choose Open With ▸ Foglio (or use File ▸ Open in Foglio). - Check the data, then choose File ▸ Save As… to save an
.xlsxcopy. Foglio does not write the old.xlsformat.
What comes across
From .xls and .xlsb files Foglio imports values, formulas and dates, on every sheet. Cell formatting such as fonts, colors and borders is not imported from these legacy formats yet, and macros are never run. If you need the original look of an old workbook, LibreOffice or Excel will preserve more of it.
Option 2: LibreOffice Calc
LibreOffice Calc is free, open source and has decades of experience with .xls, including formatting. It can also save back to .xls if a system you use still requires it. It is a larger download (about 300 MB for Apple silicon) and not a native Mac app, but for archives of old workbooks it is very thorough. See LibreOffice vs Foglio.
Option 3: Numbers or Excel
Numbers opens many .xls files: right-click ▸ Open With ▸ Numbers. If it refuses, convert the file to .xlsx with Foglio or LibreOffice first and then import that into Numbers. Microsoft Excel, of course, opens any .xls, but needs a subscription or a license to edit.
When the “.xls” is not an xls
Many websites and older business systems export files named .xls that are actually something else. If a file shows strange tags, everything in one column or garbled text, check what it really is:
- HTML tables. Some systems write a web page and call it
.xls. Open it in TextEdit; if you see<table>or<html>, rename the copy to.htmland open it in a browser, or copy the table into a spreadsheet. - Tab- or comma-separated text. If TextEdit shows plain rows of text, rename the copy to
.csvor.txt. Foglio opens these with automatic detection of encoding, delimiter and decimal separator; see how to open CSV files on a Mac. - An `.xlsx` with the wrong extension. If the file is really an
.xlsx(it starts with the lettersPKin TextEdit), rename the copy to.xlsx. - SpreadsheetML (XML). Excel 2003 XML files start with
<?xmland mentionurn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet. Foglio does not read them; LibreOffice and Excel do.
Converting many .xls files
Foglio converts one file at a time. For a large archive, LibreOffice can convert in bulk from the Terminal with its --convert-to xlsx command-line option. Whatever you use, keep the original .xls files until you have checked the results.