A co-worker sent me some programs that have xl viewer and i can not figure out how to open them with microsoft works please help

You cant open them with works. If you are referring to spreadsheets, you need to get the co worker to save them as a wks file.
Only other option if you don't want to work on them, just view them is to download excel viewer http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=EN