java biff5,Excel中BIFF5到BIFF8转换

My system uses Apache-POI to manage some xls files. Now I've got almost 300 xls files, but it appears that they are in an old format so i got this exception:

The supplied spreadsheet seems to be Excel 5.0/7.0 (BIFF5) format. POI only supports BIFF8 format (from Excel versions 97/2000/XP/2003)

Is there a way to handle that or to automatically convert all those files to a biff8 format?

解决方案

Go with converting it to OOXLS format, POI supports both BIFF8 and newer OOXLS. Download official Microsoft converter pack:

Convert files by running excelcnv.exe -oice . You can try run it directly from your code as external program, or create some batch file. There is a good explanation from mrdivo at social msdn here.