I am using Excel 2003 SP2. When I save a spreadsheet as XML, the encoding attribute is missing from the XML declaration!
Here is a sample.
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?mso-application progid="Excel.Sheet"?>

It should look like this
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="encoding scheme used"?>
<?mso-application progid="Excel.Sheet"?>

I don't think it is safe to presume that UTF-8 encoding was used when this xml file was written?
Is there some option that I am not using. I can not find any other references to this issue on the web.