Compare Features of XLS and XLSX Templates

This topic lists the difference between the XLS and XLSX templates.

Feature	XLS Template	XLSX Template
Active Cells	You can't have more than 100,000 active cells in an Excel workbook. XLS template supports maximum of 65,536 rows and 256 columns per worksheet.	XLSX template can support up to 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns.
Macros	Supported	Not supported. XLSX template can’t contain macros. Macros belong to XLSM; however, XLSM files aren’t supported as template files. If you require macros, create the macro in an XLSM file and distribute it directly to the client machines that need macro functionality. You must not include macros in the XLSX templates or outputs.
Conditional formatting per cell	Three per cell	Unlimited
Color support	56 (Indexed)	16 million (RGB)
File size	Larger	Smaller (compressed)
Security	No protection	Supports output password protection