Is there any non graphical utility in Linux or UNIX that will read Excel documents? I run up against one of these about twice a year or so on a very irregular basis. It is possible to use the strings utility on the binary and at least tell what it is about, but it totally destroys any formatting and only serves to satisfy my curiosity as to what words, etc were in there. It's a really dirty way to access it so I am asking if there is anything better or if anybody who can tell me about it knows the format of an Excel document. If I need to write such a utility, I would love to make it freely available so others can use it so I don't want to go the non disclosure route at all. Martin McCormick