Excel to CSV
Turn any sheet of an .xlsx, .xls or .ods workbook into a clean CSV or every sheet at once. Formulas come out as their values.
.xlsx, the older .xls, .xlsb, .ods and Numbers files. Formulas come out as their results.
Your file is read on this device. Nothing is uploaded.
One sheet at a time or all of them
A CSV file holds a single table, so a workbook with several sheets becomes several CSVs. Pick a sheet from the tabs to preview and download it or download every sheet at once as a zip. Hidden sheets are listed and marked, because a sheet you didn’t know was there is often where the lookup tables live.
Comma, semicolon or tab
Comma is the standard and what almost every program expects. Semicolon is what Excel itself uses in much of Europe, where the comma is the decimal point, so choose it if the file is going to someone who will open it in Excel there. Tab-separated files avoid the question entirely, because tabs almost never appear inside data.
What doesn’t survive
Formatting, colours, merged cells, charts, comments and formulas. A CSV is plain text, one row per line, which is exactly why every program on earth can read it. Merged cells come out with the value in the first cell and the rest empty. Values are quoted where they need to be, so commas, quotes and line breaks inside cells don’t break the columns.
Common questions
Does it work with old .xls files?
Yes. The binary .xls format used by Excel 97 to 2003 is read as well as the modern .xlsx, plus .xlsb, OpenDocument .ods and Apple Numbers files. Old systems still export .xls routinely and it is often the reason someone needs a converter in the first place.
What happens to formulas?
A CSV holds values, not formulas, so each formula cell comes out as the result Excel last calculated and saved. If a workbook was saved by a program that doesn’t store calculated results, those cells come out empty; open and save it in Excel first.
What is the difference between the two value options?
As shown gives you what you see in the cell: 1,234.50 with its thousands separator, a percentage as 12%, a date in its display format. Full precision gives the underlying value: 1234.5, 0.12 and dates as year-month-day. Use full precision when the CSV is going into another program.
Why does my CSV show strange characters in Excel?
Excel on Windows assumes a CSV without a byte order mark is in the old Windows encoding, so accented letters and non-Latin text come out garbled. Tick Add a byte order mark and Excel reads it as UTF-8. Leave it off for CSVs going into databases and other software, some of which trip over it.
Is my spreadsheet uploaded?
No. The workbook is read in your browser and the CSV is written on your device. Nothing is sent anywhere, which matters for payroll, customer lists and financial exports.
Guides
The other tools
All of them work the same way: the file is read in your browser and never uploaded.