Converting .xls to .xlsx

Question

Converting .xls to .xlsx

Anonymous

Hi,

So we have recently migrated clients data over to SharePoint, some of this data is an older format, namely the excel documents. We contacted Office support who guided us with the following;

Assessment / Recommendations:

1- Download and install Office Migration Planning Manager and Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack

2- Convert all the doc files to docx after modifying the ofc.iniin a Windows 10 machine

3- Convert xls to xlsx in a Windows 7 machine.

The .doc to .docx worked with no issues however, when trying the .xls to .xlsx it ran on the Windows 7 box but did not convert anything?

We need to .xls files converting to .xlsx and then deleting the original afterwards.

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

3 answers

Answer 1

Hi Connor,

Thank you for your message in this forum.

If you want to convert .xls file to .xlsx file and you don’t have may .xls files, we’d give you some workarounds and hope that will help you:

When you open older format files, you will see "Compatibility Mode" in the title bar after the file name. You can use the "convert" function. Click on the Office button, then Convert. You can also try opening the .xls file in Excel > then use the Save As command to save as an "Excel Workbook". Once you select that file type, the file extension will be xlsx and you can delete the old xls version. For more details, you can refer to this article: Save a workbook in another file format
At the same time, you mentioned “migrated clients data over to SharePoint”, actually, if you upload the .xls files to SharePoint library, if you open it in Excel Online, you an click Edit Workbook, as shown below:

Then you can select Edit in Browser, there will show a File conversion message, as shown below:

You can click Convert to convert the file to the .xlsx file.

At the same time, according to your description, it seems that you are using Office Migration Planning Manager to convert files. If you have many .xls files and you still want to use Office Migration Planning Manager, to make sure you get the professional help, we would like to suggest you post it in Technet community to get professional help. This is a special channel handling Office Migration Planning Manager related issues and queries.

Your understanding and patience will be highly appreciated.

Best Regards,

Sukie

Answer 2

Hi Connor,

Thank you for posting back. I do understand the inconvenience it has made and apologize for it.

As I mentioned above, I gave you two workarounds. However, if you want to convert .xls files to .xlsx file in bulk, we’re afraid that there is no out of box way to achieve that. You may need to refer to the advice of Office support to use those tools. According to your description, it seems that you encounter the problem when you use the tool to convert files.

However, as this category is dedicated to the queries about Office 365 products,

to make sure you get the professional help, we would like to suggest you post it in Technet community to get professional help. This is a special channel handling Office Migration Planning Manager and Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack related issues and queries.

We appreciate your understanding and precious time.

Best Regards,

Sukie

Answer 3

Anonymous

Hi Sukie,

Thank you kindly for the reply.

I should have mentioned, can this conversion be done in bulk?

Thanks,

Connor

0 comments