Forum Discussion
Losing borders in transition from Excel 97 to 2024 Pro Plus
I have a handy appointments calendar (.xls) that has used Excel 97 on a Windows 7 laptop for a long time. I want to run this on my latest laptop that has Excel 2024 Pro Plus on Windows 11. When I open this now, many of the cell borders, most of which are involved with conditional formatting, are either present when they should be absent or absent when they should be present. The calendar is useless as opened. I have worked to reformat the cells, but it has taken me hours to get from January to April and some aspects are still problematic, albeit acceptable. The conditional formatting process is very different between the two versions. Is there some trick to getting newer versions of Excel to properly recognize formatting from older versions? I created this calendar in Excel 97 very easily many years ago. I am not sure I could duplicate it, even from scratch, using Excel 2024.
2 Replies
Well, a couple weeks later with no resolution, I realized that it is just a calendar. The borders may be missing, but I can print the pages and draw them in with a pen. The data is there. Not an elegant solution, but easier than spending a ton of time overhauling the entire spreadsheet.
Your pen solution — Genuinely not a bad call for a personal calendar. Print, draw borders, done. If the data is right, the visual polish is a secondary concern.
The one thing most worth you can trying...
If you still have the Windows 7 machine: open the original .xls there, go to File → Save As, and save a copy as .xlsx (Excel 2007+ format) from within Excel 97's successor on that machine if possible — or at minimum, print everything to PDF from there. That preserves what you built without having to fight the format translation.
If the old machine is gone, Libre Office is your best free first attempt before resigning to the pen or a rebuild.
My answers are voluntary and without guarantee!
Hope this will help you.
