Excel to CSV Converter
Export spreadsheets to clean CSV files. Each sheet of a workbook becomes its own file, values are written as they appear in the cells, and the output is UTF-8 so that accents and non-Latin scripts survive.
- Runs in your browser
- No sign-up
- Free to use
How to use Excel to CSV
- Drop one or more Excel or OpenDocument spreadsheets.
- For a workbook with several sheets, tick the sheets you want to export.
- Choose the separator and whether to add the UTF-8 signature that Excel needs.
- Select Convert to CSV and download the file, or all files as a ZIP.
Excel to CSV features
All sheets, not just the first
Every sheet is exported to a separate file named after the workbook and the sheet.
Values as displayed
Dates, currencies and percentages are written the way the cells show them; formulas are replaced by their results.
Correct quoting
Values containing separators, quotes or line breaks are quoted according to the CSV standard.
Choice of separator
Comma, semicolon, tab or pipe, to suit the program that will read the file.
UTF-8 output
With an optional byte-order mark so that Excel recognises the encoding when the CSV is reopened.
Local conversion
Workbooks are read in your browser and never uploaded.
When to use Excel to CSV
- Preparing a spreadsheet for import into a database, shop system or mailing tool.
- Extracting every tab of a workbook in one step.
- Putting spreadsheet data under version control as text.
- Handing data to a script or a colleague who works with command-line tools.
Excel to CSV FAQ
Why does Excel's own “Save as CSV” often cause trouble?
It saves only the active sheet, uses the separator and encoding of the computer's regional settings, and warns about lost features with every save. On many systems the result is a semicolon-separated file in a legacy encoding, which other programs then misread. Here you choose the separator, and the encoding is always UTF-8.
What happens to formulas?
CSV can only hold values, so each formula is replaced by its last calculated result. Formatting, colours, charts, comments and merged-cell layout are not part of CSV and are left behind.
What is the UTF-8 signature option?
A byte-order mark is three invisible bytes at the start of the file. Excel uses it to recognise UTF-8; without it, Excel may show characters such as é or ü incorrectly. Most other programs ignore the mark, but a few strict importers reject it, so you can switch it off.
How are dates exported?
In the format the cell displays where one is defined, and otherwise as year-month-day. If a system needs a particular format, set the cell format in the spreadsheet before converting.
Can I convert old .xls files and OpenDocument .ods files?
Yes. The legacy binary format, the macro-enabled and binary variants of XLSX and OpenDocument spreadsheets are all supported. Password-protected files cannot be opened.
When should every value be quoted?
Rarely. Standard CSV quotes only where necessary. Some older import routines expect quotes around every field, and the option exists for those.
Getting reliable CSV out of a workbook
A workbook is a rich container: several sheets, typed cells, formulas, formats and layout. CSV is a plain grid of text. Converting from the first to the second means deciding what to keep, and the sensible answer is the values as a person reading the sheet would see them. A cell that shows 12.5% should be exported as that, not as the underlying 0.125, and a formula should contribute its result.
Three technical details determine whether the receiving program reads the file correctly. The first is the separator. Comma is the standard, yet software configured for regions that use a decimal comma expects semicolons, and tab-separated files avoid the question altogether because tabs almost never occur inside data. The second is quoting: a value that contains the separator, a quotation mark or a line break must be enclosed in quotes, with inner quotes doubled, or the columns shift. The third is encoding, where UTF-8 is the only choice that represents every character.
Multi-sheet workbooks are the case in which built-in export features fall short, since a CSV file can contain only one table. The converter writes one file per sheet and names it after both the workbook and the sheet, so that a twelve-tab workbook becomes twelve clearly named files in a single ZIP archive.
Before importing the result elsewhere, look at the header row. Importers match columns by name, and invisible differences such as trailing spaces or merged header cells are a common reason for failed imports. The preview shows the first rows exactly as they will be written.