Coverting a staroffice spreadsheet to openoffice.calc

[Cloudbane]

I know that this question doesn't really belong here but i can't think of anywhere else to turn.

At my work we were using staroffice 5? (Not sure on the version) to keep a spreadsheet of all the jobs we have done for the month. Recently our server went down but we managed to recover our data and our bill sheets, but we no longer have staroffice and can't open our spreadsheets with openoffice. It keeps asking for us to choose a filter (we have gone through each and everyone without success), i have even tried out some online site that supposedly converts it to an excel spreadsheet, but still no success.

Things are starting to get urgent as we have not been able to get our full months wages as we can not see what jobs we have done.

My question is this, is there some way or some program i can use to convert the file into something easilly readable? I tried the openoffice 1.1 in my Fedora Core1, but even that did nothing.

Any help would be greatly appreciated by myself and my collegues.

P.S. Excuse the bad spelling and lame formatting of the question. ;)

[EnigmaOne]

Probably StarOffice 5.1 or 5.2.
I do have a copy of the 5.1 and the 5.2 CDs.
(Can't put my hands on 6 at the moment, though I recall it wasn't the best release from Sun.)

PM me with an address you can release to some hairy stranger in the USA. I'll burn a copy of them (5.2 & 5.2) for you and drop them in the mail to your address. That should get you going in good stead.

After that's all sorted-out, do yourself a favor and buy a copy of StarOffice7.
IIRC, it'll import all the old SO formats: 5.1, 5.2, 6; but you'll have to get used to doing without the integrated desktop/app environment.

Can do?

[JohnT]

Documents are converted to XML which is the format it uses now.

This is from the most recent Open Office "help" content.
Document Converter

Converts documents into the XML format used by OpenOffice.org.
To access this command...
Choose File - AutoPilot - Document Converter

The AutoPilot converts documents and templates from the binary format from previous OpenOffice.org versions (StarOffice 5.2 and before), as well as documents from Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The source files are only read, not edited. New target files are written with the new file name extension in the same or a new folder.
The Document Converter AutoPilot contains the following pages: