Format

Microsoft Excel 2000-2003 Workbook (xls)

Summary

Name

Microsoft Excel 2000-2003 Workbook (xls)

Version

8X

Identifiers

• Apple Uniform Type Identifier: com.microsoft.excel.xls
• PUID: fmt/62

Format type

Spreadsheet

Disclosure

None

Description

The Binary Interchange File Format (BIFF) is a spreadsheet file format developed by Microsoft. BIFF 8X is a native file format of Microsoft Excel XP. The format is proprietary and Microsoft does not make details of its structure public. The information here is derived primarily from OpenOffice.org's reverse-engineered documentation of the format and should not therefore be regarded as definitive. BIFF 8X is based on Microsoft’s generic OLE2 Compound Document Format. An Excel workbook is stored as a ‘Book’ stream within a Compound Document Format file. The Book stream comprises a Workbook Globals Substream, containing a Beginning of File (BOF) record, the Workbook global records, and terminated by an End of File (EOF) record. This is followed by one or more Worksheet substreams, containing a Beginning of File (BOF) record, the worksheet records, and terminated by an End of File (EOF) record. The format remained unchanged with the release of Excel 2003.

Source

Digital Preservation Department / The National Archives

Relationships

Has priority over

• OLE2 Compound Document Format

Is subsequent version of

• Microsoft Excel 97-2003 Workbook (xls) 8 & 8X

Is subtype of

• OLE2 Compound Document Format

Changelog

• Updated in V122

  Release date

  19 January 2026

  Excel 2000-2003 8X: PUID deprecated in favour of fmt/61. Submitted by Preservica.