References

Some of our original research is documented at https://oss.sheetjs.com/notes/

The specifications list is non-exhaustive.

• Worksheet File Format (From Lotus) December 1984
• Open Document Format for Office Applications Version 1.2 (29 September 2011)
• ISO/IEC 29500:2012(E) "Information technology — Document description and processing languages — Office Open XML File Formats"

Open Specifications Promise

Lotus released their "Worksheet File Format" documentation into the Public Domain. Microsoft opted for the "Open Specifications Promise", a covenant not to sue. The documentation that falls under the promise are listed below.

Specifications (click to show)

• MS-CFB: Compound File Binary File Format
• MS-CTXLS: Excel Custom Toolbar Binary File Format
• MS-EXSPXML3: Excel Calculation Version 2 Web Service XML Schema
• MS-ODATA: Open Data Protocol (OData)
• MS-ODRAW: Office Drawing Binary File Format
• MS-ODRAWXML: Office Drawing Extensions to Office Open XML Structure
• MS-OE376: Office Implementation Information for ECMA-376 Standards Support
• MS-OFFCRYPTO: Office Document Cryptography Structure
• MS-OI29500: Office Implementation Information for ISO/IEC 29500 Standards Support
• MS-OLEDS: Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) Data Structures
• MS-OLEPS: Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) Property Set Data Structures
• MS-OODF3: Office Implementation Information for ODF 1.2 Standards Support
• MS-OSHARED: Office Common Data Types and Objects Structures
• MS-OVBA: Office VBA File Format Structure
• MS-XLDM: Spreadsheet Data Model File Format
• MS-XLS: Excel Binary File Format (.xls) Structure Specification
• MS-XLSB: Excel (.xlsb) Binary File Format
• MS-XLSX: Excel (.xlsx) Extensions to the Office Open XML SpreadsheetML File Format
• XLS: Microsoft Office Excel 97-2007 Binary File Format Specification
• RTF: Rich Text Format

Other Resources

• ISBN 1556155212 "Excel Software Development Kit Version 4"
• ISBN 1556156324 "Excel Developer's Kit Version 5"