Why Are the Microsoft Office File Formats So Complicated? (And Some Workarounds)
Apress eBooks · 2008
Last week, Microsoft published the binary file formats for Office. These formats appear to be almost completely insane. The Excel 97–2003 file format is a 349-page PDF file. But wait, that’s not all there is to it! This document includes the following interesting comment: Each Excel workbook is stored in a compound file . These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.