Expert: Scottgem - 2/9/2007

Question
My husband has a company credit card and he has to fill out an expense report. Well..he does'nt do it i do. I do these at home on my computer. The company got a new expense report and his boss emailed it to me. I think it was done on Microsoft office small business. I dont have that on my computer so when i try to open it i get a window that says "There is no association to read this file". I went to the microsoft download center to download it (because i cant afford to buy it) and it was going to be two different downloads. I have dial-up so you can imagine. The first one was going to be 56 hours and the second one was 48. The internet service that i have, you can only be online for four hours and then it disconnects and you have to sign back in. Saftey feature i guess. My question is is there something alot smaller i can download to be able to read this? Thf file is called XP Newest Sheet XLS.file.

Answer
OK, First an XLS file is Microsoft Excel, their spreadhseet program. You cannot download it for free. its a commercial program. You can get the Home and Student version for $150. If you can't afford that, you can go to OpenOffice.org and download their office suite. This is freeware and its will open XLS files and save in a compatible format.

I don't know how big OpenOffice is though. Its probably a fairly long download on dialup. You might see if you can get an older version of Office on E-Bay.

HTH
Scott<>