Excel to CSV Converter

How to Use the Excel to CSV Converter

1. Upload your Excel fileby clicking “Choose File” or dragging and dropping it onto the upload area. Supported formats are .xls, .xlsx, .xlsb, and .ods, up to 20 MB.
2. Select the sheetyou want to convert from the dropdown. If the workbook has only one sheet, it’s selected automatically. Multi-sheet workbooks show all available sheets.
3. Choose your delimiter — comma is the default and most widely compatible, but you can select semicolon (common in European locales), tab (for TSV format), pipe, or a custom character.
4. Toggle “Include header row” to keep or remove the first row of column names from the output. Disable this if you want pure data rows without headers.
5. Toggle “Quote all fields” if you need every field wrapped in double quotes, not just those containing delimiters or special characters. This is useful for strict CSV parsers.
6. Toggle “Add UTF-8 BOM” if you plan to open the CSV in Microsoft Excel. The BOM ensures Excel correctly recognizes UTF-8 encoding and displays special characters properly.
7. Click “Convert” or let auto-conversion process your file. The CSV output appears in the editor with syntax highlighting.
8. Copy or downloadthe result. Click “Copy CSV” to copy to your clipboard, or “Download CSV” to save it as a file.

Features

• Multiple format support — Handles XLS (Excel 97-2003), XLSX (Excel 2007+), XLSB (binary), and ODS (OpenDocument Spreadsheet) files with full fidelity parsing.
• Sheet selection — Multi-sheet workbooks display a dropdown to choose which sheet to convert, so you can target exactly the data you need.
• Configurable delimiters — Choose between comma, semicolon, tab, pipe, or any custom single character as the field separator for compatibility with different locales and systems.
• Header row control — Optionally include or exclude the first row of column names from the CSV output, depending on your downstream needs.
• Quote all fields mode — Force double-quoting around every field for strict CSV parsers that require consistent quoting, not just for fields containing delimiters or special characters.
• UTF-8 BOM support — Add a Byte Order Mark to the output so Microsoft Excel correctly recognizes UTF-8 encoding when opening the CSV, preventing garbled special characters.
• File size validation— Clear error messages when files exceed the 20 MB limit, showing the actual file size so you know exactly what you’re working with.
• Statistics panel — After conversion, see the sheet name, row count, column count, and original file size at a glance.
• 100% client-side — Your files are processed entirely in your browser. No data is uploaded to any server, making this safe for confidential financial data, personal records, and proprietary business information.
• One-click copy and download — Copy the CSV output directly to your clipboard or download it as a .csv file with a single click.

Excel Formats Explained

XLS (Excel 97-2003) is the legacy binary format used by Microsoft Excel for over a decade. It uses a proprietary binary structure called Binary Interchange File Format (BIFF). While largely superseded by XLSX, many organizations still maintain XLS files in their archives, and some older systems export data exclusively in this format. Our converter reads XLS files without requiring Excel to be installed.

XLSX (Excel 2007+)is the modern default format for Microsoft Excel. It’s an Open XML format — essentially a ZIP archive containing XML files that describe the workbook, worksheets, styles, and relationships. XLSX supports up to 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns per sheet, Unicode text, rich formatting, charts, pivot tables, and more. It’s the most common format you’ll encounter today.

XLSB (Binary)is Excel’s binary format, similar to XLSX in structure but using binary encoding instead of XML. XLSB files are typically 25-50% smaller than XLSX and open/save faster, making them popular for very large workbooks. However, they’re less widely supported by non-Microsoft tools. Our converter handles XLSB just as smoothly as XLSX.

ODS (OpenDocument Spreadsheet)is the open standard format used by LibreOffice Calc, OpenOffice Calc, Google Sheets (as an export option), and other open-source office suites. Like XLSX, it’s a ZIP archive containing XML files, but follows the OASIS OpenDocument specification. Converting ODS to CSV enables seamless data exchange between open-source and commercial ecosystems.

CSV (Comma-Separated Values)is the universal interchange format for tabular data. It’s a plain text format where each line represents a row and fields are separated by a delimiter character. CSV has no native support for multiple sheets, formatting, formulas, or data types — everything is text. This simplicity is its greatest strength: CSV files can be read by virtually every application, programming language, and database system in existence. When you convert Excel to CSV, you trade richness for universal compatibility.

Why add a BOM? The Byte Order Mark (U+FEFF) is a special Unicode character that some applications use to detect text encoding. Microsoft Excel notoriously mishandles UTF-8 CSV files without a BOM, often displaying special characters as garbled text. Adding a UTF-8 BOM to your CSV output ensures Excel opens it with the correct encoding. Other applications typically ignore the BOM or handle it gracefully.