Excel to CSV
How to use
Converts Excel XLSX worksheets into CSV or TSV files. Drop the workbook, choose the first sheet or all sheets, pick the separator, and download.
Step 1 of 4: Upload
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Step 1 of 4 · Upload
- 1Upload
- 2Options
- 3Convert
- 4Download
- Importing spreadsheet data into a database, CRM or mailing tool
- Exporting every sheet of a workbook for a data pipeline in one step
- Handing data to a script or analytics tool that reads CSV
- Converting confidential spreadsheets without uploading them to a service
What a workbook loses on its way to CSV, and why
An XLSX file is a ZIP of XML parts: sheet data, shared strings, styles, formulas and sometimes charts. CSV can hold exactly one thing, a single grid of text. So converting keeps each cell's value and drops everything else. Formulas become the result Excel last saved, colours and number formatting disappear, and merged cells become one value followed by empty cells. None of that is a flaw in the converter; CSV simply has nowhere to put it.
Dates need special care, because Excel stores them as numbers: 1 January 2024 is 45292, a count of days from a starting point in 1899. Written to CSV naively, a date column becomes a column of five-digit numbers. This converter reads each cell's number format, recognises which ones Excel displays as dates, and writes those as ISO dates such as 2024-01-01, which every database and programming language reads unambiguously. Workbooks created on older Macs, which count from 1904 instead, are detected and handled too.
A workbook with several sheets produces one CSV per sheet, or just the first sheet if that is all you need. The file is written as UTF-8 with a byte order mark, which is what makes Excel reopen accented and non-Latin characters correctly. Choose semicolons instead of commas if the file is going to someone whose Excel uses a comma as the decimal separator, as it does in much of Europe.
Free and private. Everything runs on your own device, with no account and no uploads.
CSV is the lowest common denominator of data: databases, import wizards, analytics tools, CRMs and scripts all read it, while many of them cannot read an Excel workbook. This converter opens an .xlsx file in your browser and writes each worksheet's values as CSV (or TSV). Dates come out as ISO dates rather than Excel's internal serial numbers, formulas are replaced with their calculated results, and you can export every sheet at once instead of saving them one by one from Excel.
CSV stores values, not formulas, so each formula cell is exported as the result Excel last calculated and saved in the file.
Excel stores dates as the number of days since 1900. This converter reads the cell's number format and writes recognised dates as YYYY-MM-DD, which every system parses unambiguously.
No: CSV is plain text. Colours, fonts, merged cells, charts and column widths are not part of the format and are dropped.
Not the old binary .xls format from Excel 97–2003. Open it in Excel, LibreOffice or Google Sheets, save as .xlsx, then convert.
In countries that write decimals as 3,5 Excel expects CSV fields separated by semicolons. Choosing semicolon makes the file open in the right columns there.
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Add an XLSX workbook
Drop one or more .xlsx files. Old binary .xls files need saving as .xlsx first.
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Choose sheets
Export the first sheet, or every sheet as its own CSV in a ZIP.
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Pick the separator
Comma is standard. Choose semicolon if the file is for a European Excel that uses commas as decimal marks, or TSV for tabs.
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Convert and download
The CSV is UTF-8 with a byte-order mark so accented characters open correctly in Excel.
- ·Check hidden sheets: "All sheets" exports them too
- ·If a column of IDs lost its leading zeros, it was stored as a number in Excel; format it as text there
- ·Use TSV when your data contains lots of commas, such as addresses