MS Works to Office conversion problem

Hi all!

Couldn't think of anyone else to ask on this problem - MS website not at all helpful. I bought my notebook about a year ago, and am loving it. Had Office 2003 put on it instead of Microsoft Works, needed Excel for hubby. I have an old file that I transferred off my old desktop that was in the wdb format (Works database) and I just can't get it to open in Excel. I didn't get Access on the notebook. I try to "open with" Excel, but get the error "wdb format is invalid." It's just an address list in a spreadsheet style format with columns and such. Any ideas? I tried also opening in just wordpad, and the info is there, but with a ton of junk characters and pretty unreadable.

Thanks in advance!

 

That's Microsoft for you. Try installing Works on another PC, and then opening/saving the file in a different format (like maybe CSV). That might help.

 

Excel isn't a database, it's a spreadsheet. You shouldn't expect to be able to load a file of one type in a totally different sort of application.

I understand even MS Access cannot open wdb files, but there is a workaround. See http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=154167