Excel compatible spreadsheet program

Bit of a long shot, but thought I'd ask here.

Does anyone know of a free / cheap Excel compatible spreadsheet program? That can load / edit Excel files (*.xls), or at least convert them to it's native format.

Why do I ask? Simple - I can't afford Excel, but occasionally need to view and edit spreadsheets that people e-mail to me.

Try www.openoffice.org - i'm sure 'Calc' supports excel format.

Hey - that looks great... thanks Gfk!

[EDIT] This is indeed great and suits my needs fine. Best of all - it's free! :)

I've read that Gnumeric is superior to Calc.

I've used OpenOffice before, and it's really close to using MS Office. Great product, especially given it's free.

Open Office has EVERTHING... just make sure to pick SAVE AS...

Everything except VBA, which is to be expected.

They have Starscript or soemthing (been a long while so i don't remember what it was called)

Actually, I'm pretty sure it tries to translate from VBA to whatever they have...I think I read that somewhere...

As far as I'm told the only underdeveloped part of open office is the Access equivalent...