Significant characteristics of spreadsheets

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From Florida Digital Archive Plan: BIFF8 (http://www.fcla.edu/digitalArchive/formatInfo.htm):

BIFF8 exhibits the following significant characteristics. They are the significant characteristics which the Florida Digital Archive intends to preserve for adopting migration or normalization policy.

• Content: All cell data and formula will be preserved. Chart and Pivot tables may not be preserved.
• Context: Contextual information about the spreadsheet, such as author, title, etc, will be preserved.
• Behavior: BIFF8 can encode VBA macros which can be used for defining custom spreadsheet behaviors. In addition, BIFF8 can contain external links to external sources. These behaviors may not be preserved.
• Structure: Structural information such as the cell locations (row, column) and the nested worksheets will be preserved.
• Appearance: BIFF8 can contain appearance attributes such as fonts, colors, sizes, cell formats, etc. Cell formats will be preserved. The rest of the appearance attributes may not be preserved.