I'm Technical Support for my parents, and I need help!

[Not_Giving_Up]

They recently bought a new computer and have Office. Their old puter ran the Corel Suites. They are trying to convert a Quattro Pro 10 file to Excel 2003, but it's just not working. I spent an hour on the phone with them last night, trying to walk them through various attempts at file conversion, all to no avail. Help??

I'm certified in Word and Excel, have no use for Corel anymore!

[cheezus]

1. export to csv (comma seperated values) and import that into excel

that's my first guess anyway; never actually used Quattro Pro

[Metatron]

2. I typed "import Quattro Pro file" into Excel's help and got the following:

"You can convert a Quattro Pro file to a Microsoft Excel file by using the Open command (on the File menu) in Excel. For more information, see "Supported Lotus 1-2-3 and Quattro Pro versions" in the Help topic, About opening and saving files from other programs." Good luck.

[Not_Giving_Up]

3. Yeah, I read that online last night too

But, it doesn't work. I think they're missing something (likely). I had them e-mail it to me (I got old puter with QP on it) and I saved it as an older version, (it was originally in QP 10, according to the website, Excel 03 will convert up to QP 7), it still didn't work.

[Metatron]

4. I would go with importing as a tab delimited file, then.

I'll keep looking though. Now, I am quite curious. :)

[Not_Giving_Up]

5. They tried that too

The reponse I got was "Now I have all these e's and a's and squares"...Me: Crap, that didn't work!

[mcscajun]

6. Is there anything in the QP 10 version that will backformat?

If QP 10 is newer than Excel 2003 then Excel will certainly not be able to convert the file directly. No surprise there. But normally, the originating software (in this case Quattro)has the ability to 'save down' a newer file to an earlier format of its own. Look for it.

I haven't used Quattro in years, so I can't help more than that. Good luck.

[Not_Giving_Up]

7. Yep...

I saved it as version 7 and version 6...neither of those worked.

I'm going to end up going over there and doing this myself. I'm sure they missed something.

[mcscajun]

8. Would seem the best course...

...the more complicated the support, the less likely it is to work over the phone.

Ain't family fun? :)

[Not_Giving_Up]

9. What's really scary is

My stepdad took a computer class a few years ago. It taught him just enough to be dangerous.

They'll be pissed, I can't go until the weekend...I have to work ya know! Then I have short people in the evenings (one who's Aspie mind blows a gasket if you change the routine)

[Metatron]

10. FYI - this seems to be a popular problem.

Your parents might not have done anything wrong! There are many people on the web looking for the Excel converter for QP 10 files to no avail. Here's a link to someone's similar experience http://weblogs.asp.net/derekh/archive/2004/09/03/225061.aspx.

[mcscajun]

11. Sounds like they oughta be yellin' at the Quattro folks.

Just MHO