I'm embarrassed to say I'm surprised. How long could it have taken after last week's revaluation of the use of Microsoft Word .DOC files to spread "pump-and-dump" spam for someone to start using Excel files for the same reason? It's happened. Excel is great for this sort of thing, since you can make a stock scam seem so much more sophisticated, but it's got some problems. Far fewer users can open an Excel file than a Word document, most of which can be opened by Wordpad, standard on Windows. So now that it's clear how lot the bar is for such things, what will the next format be? I guess it has to be .PPT, PowerPoint files. The spam can be a full-blown presentation with music and video. And even fewer recipients will be able to view it.