Microsoft Excel (.xls, .xlsx)
A spreadsheet of coordinates. RouteConverter reads and writes both Excel generations, which is the shortest path from a GPS track to a table you can sort, filter and chart.
At a glance
| Extension | .xls, .xlsx |
| Encoding | binary |
| Media type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet |
| Invented | 1985 |
| By | Microsoft |
| Current version | Office Open XML — ECMA-376 (December 2006), ISO/IEC 29500 (published November 2008) |
History
Excel was released by Microsoft on 30 September 1985, for the Apple Macintosh. Until the 2007 version its native file was a proprietary binary, the Excel Binary File Format, .xls. Excel 2007 switched to Office Open XML and the .xlsx extension. That format was standardised twice over: approved as ECMA-376 in December 2006 and published as ISO/IEC 29500 in November 2008.
Where it is used
Excel is where GPS data goes to be analysed rather than navigated — checking timestamps, computing distances between points, cleaning up a messy import, or handing a colleague something they will actually open. LibreOffice Calc, Numbers and Google Sheets all read both generations too.
Structure
The two generations could hardly be less alike. The older .xls is a proprietary binary record stream. The newer .xlsx is a ZIP archive containing a directory of XML parts — one for the workbook, one per worksheet, one for the shared strings — so it can be unzipped and inspected without Excel. Both hold the same thing here: a sheet with one row per position and one column per field.
How widespread
Universal in offices, and the reason a spreadsheet export is often more useful than another GPS format. Being a real spreadsheet rather than CSV, it keeps column types and formatting instead of leaving every field to be guessed on the way back in.
RouteConverter support
| Reads | Microsoft Excel 97-2008, Microsoft Excel 2008 |
| Writes | Microsoft Excel 97-2008, Microsoft Excel 2008 |