Excel to CSV
Convert Excel workbooks to CSV in your browser. Every worksheet becomes its own file, formulas are exported as their calculated values, and dates come out in a sane format.
- Files never leave your device
- Free, no signup
- No watermarks
- Works offline once loaded
How to excel to csv
- 1
Add your workbook
Drop an .xlsx file onto the page.
- 2
Pick a delimiter
Comma, semicolon or tab — semicolon suits many European locales.
- 3
Download
One CSV per worksheet, bundled as a ZIP when there is more than one.
What XLSX actually is, and why CSV outlives it
A modern Excel file is not one document but a small ZIP archive containing a collection of XML files describing the workbook — the cell values, the formatting, the formulas, the charts, shared string tables, and quite a bit more — bundled together and given the `.xlsx` extension. Reading it correctly requires understanding that whole internal structure, which is why it needs an actual library rather than a simple text parser. CSV, in stark contrast, is plain text: rows separated by newlines, values separated by a delimiter, nothing else. That simplicity is exactly why virtually every database import tool, analytics platform, and programming language can read CSV natively with no special library at all, and why a CSV file opened in a plain text editor decades from now will still be perfectly readable — a guarantee a proprietary, versioned binary-ish format cannot make in quite the same way.
Why formulas export as numbers, not formulas
CSV has no mechanism whatsoever for representing a formula — it can only hold plain values, so a cell containing `=SUM(A1:A10)` in the original workbook exports as whatever number that formula last calculated to, with the formula itself discarded entirely. This is a fundamental limitation of the destination format, not a choice this converter makes: there is no CSV syntax for a formula to export as, even in principle.
A subtlety worth knowing: the exported value is whichever result was last stored in the workbook, calculated by whatever program most recently saved it. If a workbook's formulas were edited by a tool that does not recalculate values on save — some scripted or programmatic edits — the stored result can be stale relative to the current formula. Opening the file in Excel or Google Sheets and saving it once, forcing a full recalculation, ensures the exported CSV reflects current values rather than an outdated cached result.
Why a workbook with several sheets becomes several files
CSV represents exactly one table — there is no header, section marker, or delimiter defined anywhere in the format for separating multiple tables within a single file. A workbook with three worksheets genuinely cannot be represented as one CSV without losing information or inventing a non-standard convention that other software would not recognise, which is why each worksheet becomes its own separate CSV file, named after the sheet it came from, bundled together as a ZIP when there is more than one. Any tool claiming to preserve multiple sheets in a single CSV file is either silently dropping every sheet but one, or using some non-standard convention that ordinary CSV readers will not understand.
Frequently asked questions
Why convert to CSV at all?
Because almost every database, analytics tool and programming language reads CSV natively, while XLSX is a zipped XML format that needs a library. CSV is also plain text, so it stays readable in fifty years — which XLSX may not.
What happens to formulas?
They export as their calculated values, which is what CSV can represent — a CSV has no concept of a formula. If a cell has never been recalculated by Excel, its stored value is what you get, so open and save the workbook first if you have edited formulas outside Excel.
What about multiple worksheets?
Each becomes its own CSV, named after the sheet. CSV is a single table by definition, so there is no way to represent a multi-sheet workbook in one file — anything claiming otherwise is silently dropping data.
Are formatting, charts and colours preserved?
No, and they cannot be. CSV stores values only — no fonts, colours, merged cells, charts, pivot tables or conditional formatting. Merged cells export their value in the top-left position and blanks elsewhere.
Are .xls files supported?
Not currently — only the modern .xlsx format. The legacy binary .xls format needs a separate parser. Opening it in Excel or LibreOffice and saving as .xlsx takes a few seconds.