Minimum version of Excel for design tables

[Jonas Concepcion]

Hi All,

Were pretty integrated with Google Drive for all things office. However we do have some huge design tables we need to maintain which requires Excel. Rather than splurge for the most current Microsoft Office suite, I was wondering if anyone has experience using older versions of Excel with the current versions of Solidworks.

[gupta9665]

You can get the supported version here https://www.solidworks.com/support/system-requirements

I'm using Office 2010 with SW2020 without any issues.

[mattpeneguy]

You can get the supported version here https://www.solidworks.com/support/system-requirements

I'm using Office 2010 with SW2020 without any issues.

Did SW warn you about possible incompatibility when you installed it? From the link it appears you are supposed to have Office 2013 for SW 2020. Office 2016 or newer will be required for 2021 and 2022.
I guess there really shouldn't be any problems with older versions of Excel for newer versions of SW. The only problem I've had was using a newer version of Excel than was supported. I don't remember since it's been so long, but I did have a problem with that.

My advice in this situation would be to get the cheapest newest version of Excel you can get. If you can get Excel 2016 cheap then that will be good for well into the future because SW 2022 supports it and hasn't even been released yet.

I've been an advocate for SW rolling up Libreoffice/Openoffice Calc into SW to eliminate the need for Excel completely, but that hasn't happened yet (it could really supercharge equations, too). I believe IV has some type of built in functionality like that, but I've only ever seen a video of it.

[gupta9665]

Did SW warn you about possible incompatibility when you installed it?

It was an old installation prior to 2021 and there is no issues for the incompatibility but in case of any issues related to Office version, SW won't support.