Format
Microsoft Excel 4.0 Worksheet (xls)
Summary
- Name
- Microsoft Excel 4.0 Worksheet (xls)
- Version
- 4S
- Identifiers
-
- MIME: application/vnd.ms-excel
- Apple Uniform Type Identifier: com.microsoft.excel.xls
- PUID: fmt/57
- Format type
- Spreadsheet
- Disclosure
- None
- Description
- The Binary Interchange File Format (BIFF) is a spreadsheet file format developed by Microsoft. BIFF 4S is a native file format of Microsoft Excel 4.0 for Windows. Excel 4.0 allowed either a single worksheet to be stored as a worksheet file (BIFF 4S), or for multiple worksheets to be combined in a single workbook file (BIFF 4W). The format is proprietary and Microsoft does not make details of its structure public. The information contained here is derived primarily from OpenOffice.org's reverse-engineered documentation of the format, and should not therefore be regarded as definitive. BIFF is a stream based format, and a BIFF 4S file comprises a single Worksheet stream, containing a Beginning of File (BOF) record, followed by a series of Worksheet records, and terminated by an End of File (EOF) record.
- Format encoding
- Binary
- File extensions
-
xls - Submitted by
- Digital Preservation Department / The National Archives
- Developed by
- Microsoft Corporation
- Supported by
- Microsoft Corporation
Relationships
- Is previous version of
- Is subsequent version of
- Is supertype of
Internal signatures
BIFF 4 Worksheet
- Description
- BIFF4: BOF hex 0904. record length hex 0600, BIFF version=(not used), filetype=worksheet=1000
- Provenance
- www.openoffice.org/sc/excelfileformat.pdf www.idea2ic.com/File_Formats/MICROSOFT%20EXCEL%20FILE%20FORMATxls.pdf www.opennet.ru/docs/formats/xls.txt
Byte sequences
- Min Frag Length
- Absolute from BOF
- Offset
- 0
- Max offset
- None
- Byte Sequence
09040600{2}1000- Endianness
- Little-endian
Changelog
-
V69
- Release date
- 19 July 2013
-
Updated
Microsoft Excel Worksheet 4.0: Improved signature, submitted by Georgia Technology Research Institute.