My experience is that open-source implementations like LibreOffice have much better support for the older file formats. docx/xlsx/etc may be a "zip of XML files" but it doesn't really matter if the original data is stored as XML or a blob when it comes to the end user's rendering experience -- it's about how the system can interpret that data. And the interpretations of the new file formats are mostly severely lacking.
Very much this. Sometimes, I don't want (or can't) open OO.org, I just want to be able to get a quick glimpse in Emacs (http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/UnXls) or mutt of a simple table of data someone sent me, but so far there are no quick CLI tools (that I've found) to do this. It almost feels as if Microsoft said "hmm, all these free software products can open our files, but they're still complaining about open file formats; how can we abuse our monopoly even more and guarantee that some truly open standard doesn't get mandated?" and thus was born docx, xlsx, pptx, etc.
Yes, it gets data into the sheet, but means that you need extra steps to run calculations. There is no option to specify the column as a number during the import phase. So what takes one step in Excel takes a minimum of two in Libre.
I thought you were worried about leading zeros or something.
In calc 4.0 on XP, I can choose from a few options for each column and the default (called "Standard") results in a column that I can use in calculations (if I highlight the cells it shows the sum, in formulas, etc.).
If I specify the column is "Text", leading zeros are retained.
The newest versions of LibreOffice are a lot better at handling xlsx, and it is getting better all the time. I still see some issues, but lately I have had a much better time importing.
