Excel 2003 compatibility with SharePoint standard edition 2007

Question

I'm hoping someone can provide me with some good information/links with regards to the compatability/limitation of sharepoint standard edition and Excel 2003.

I've searched all around google and found plenty of information about Excel Services and Excel.

However in my shop we're using the standard edition of SharePoint (no Excel Services) and the Office 2003.

I'm no Excel guru, but plenty of users are telling me about issues with macros and spreadsheets that link to other spreadsheets.

If you guys have personal experience or some references you could share it would be very much appreciated.

Answer 1

Most of those rants about macros and external data sources are about Excel Services as you mentioned, therefore not relevant for your deployment.

Excel 2003 integrates with Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Standard mostly by means of opening spreadsheets from document libraries and creating and summarizing SharePoint list items using "List" controls you can place on sheets, creating a list using tabular data region converted to the same "List" control is another option.

If you need to know, the functionality I described depends on ActiveX controls installed with Office 2003, the *.iqy file extension association with Excel, the correct HTTP headers rendered by the SharePoint site and the SharePoint web services such as Lists.asmx available to the client.