Dear all, what follows is a summary of a recent exchange on the developers' list: rumour has it that sometimes gretl can't open files created by excel 2003 properly. I don't have excel myself, but I ran some experiments using a friend's computer and I was unable to generate realistic test cases in xls format that gretl couldn't open. After my request, Sven tried too, but with the same result. Allin then suggested that maybe the rumour originated from files in the 2003 XML office format, which we know we can't read presently. So, as per Sven's suggestion, this is a request for cooperation: has any of you come across an xls file created by excel 2003 which gretl couldn't open? If so, could you provide us with it so that we try to figure out what the problem is? Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti Dipartimento di Economia Università Politecnica delle Marche r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it http://www.econ.univpm.it/lucchetti