Tara reads and writes files in Excel format. It supports the biff8 format used in Excel 97/2000/xp/2003. It also reads older formats used in earlier versions of Excel. It can also work with spreadsheets like OpenOffice and Gnumeric that support Excel formats.
Download tara.zip (or tara601.zip for J601) and unzip it in the J addons directory. After it is installed, run lab 'Tara and Excel' for examples of using the system.
Tara was developed and is copyrighted by Bill Lam, bill_lam@myrealbox.com, but may be used freely, even for commercial purposes.