Openoffice is a Unix and Windows alternative that mimmicks the features of Microsoft Office. It's a free package that will open most MS OFFICE files, and comes bundled with WRITER (similar to MS Word), CALC (similar to Excel), IMPRESS (similar to Powerpoint), DRAW (similar to Publisher).
www.openoffice.org I've played with it on a unix machine here, and it's pretty impressive considering the price.
Many governments are switching to Unix and Openoffice because they feel Microsoft is too greedy and insecure.
With the real MS Office, Excel is the spreadsheet program, and Access is their database. Excel can import a text file with commas identifying the fields, and should pop up with a dialogue to confirm this. If the openoffice alternative to Excel can't do this, I'd open it in another app that can (access, excel, word, etc) and then SAVE AS to the excel native format - so you can then open it in the OpenOffice CALC program.
Hopefully there's someone here who uses the program who can give a better answer. If all else fails and the data isn't confidential, email it and i'll gladly convert it to the Excel Spreadsheet format for ya.
Mike