Excel to CSV
Turn an Excel workbook into CSV in your browser. Choose the delimiter, convert every sheet at once, and keep leading zeros intact. Nothing is uploaded.
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All Document tools →This tool runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent to our servers, so there is nothing for us to store or see.
About the Excel to CSV
Convert an Excel workbook (.xlsx) into plain CSV, one sheet at a time or every sheet at once. The whole conversion runs inside this page on your own device — the file is never uploaded, so a spreadsheet full of salaries, patient records or customer addresses never leaves the machine it is on.
Two things decide whether a converted CSV is actually usable, and most converters get both wrong. The first is leading zeros. A column of order numbers like 00714 or a postcode like 07030 is text, not a number, and a converter that helpfully parses it hands back 714 — silently, in a file that looks perfectly fine until somebody tries to match it against another system. Cell values are taken here exactly as the workbook stores them.
The second is dates. A date in a spreadsheet is not a date at all: it is a number wearing a format, so the cell holding 15 March 2023 really contains 45000. Read without its format that is what you get. Dates are resolved here using the style each cell points at, and written as YYYY-MM-DD — unambiguous, sortable, and the same whichever side of the Atlantic the file came from. The 1900 leap-year quirk Excel has carried since 1985 is accounted for too.
Formulas are converted to the values they produced rather than to their expressions, merged and skipped cells keep their positions so columns stay aligned with their headers, and the delimiter is yours to pick — comma, semicolon for European spreadsheets, tab or pipe.
How to use the Excel to CSV
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Choose your workbook
Drop an .xlsx file onto the box or click to pick one. You can queue several workbooks and convert them in one go.
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Pick the sheets and delimiter
Convert just the first sheet with data, or every sheet at once. Choose a comma, semicolon, tab or pipe, and add a byte-order mark if the result is going straight back into Excel.
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Convert
Conversion starts as soon as the file is read. A single sheet produces one CSV; several sheets produce a ZIP containing one CSV per sheet, named after the sheet.
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Download
Use the download button on the row. The result is named after your workbook, so a folder of conversions stays identifiable.
Frequently asked questions
Is my spreadsheet uploaded anywhere?
No. The workbook is unpacked and read entirely inside your browser, and no part of it is sent to a server. You can disconnect from the internet after the page has loaded and the tool keeps working exactly as before, which is the simplest way to confirm that for yourself.
Will leading zeros survive the conversion?
Yes. Values are taken exactly as the workbook stores them, so an order number like 00714 stays 00714 rather than becoming 714. This is the single most common way a converted CSV turns out to be quietly wrong, because the resulting file looks perfectly valid until somebody tries to match it against another system.
How are dates handled?
A spreadsheet stores a date as a number with a display format attached, so the cell showing 15 March 2023 actually contains 45000. Each cell is resolved using the style it points at and written as YYYY-MM-DD, which is unambiguous and sorts correctly. Excel's long-standing 1900 leap-year quirk is accounted for as well.
What happens to formulas?
You get the value the formula last produced, not the formula itself. A cell containing =SUM(A2:A9) converts to its result, because that is what the spreadsheet was showing. A CSV has no way to express a formula, so writing the expression instead would produce a file that no longer contains your numbers.
Can it convert a .xls file?
No, and it will tell you so rather than failing vaguely. The older .xls is an entirely different binary format, not a variety of .xlsx. Open it in Excel, LibreOffice or Numbers and use Save As to produce a .xlsx, which takes a few seconds and loses nothing.
Which delimiter should I choose?
A comma is the default and the right answer almost everywhere. Choose semicolon if the file is going to somebody using a European locale, where Excel expects it and will otherwise drop every row into a single column. Tab and pipe are useful when your own data contains a lot of commas.
My workbook has several sheets. What do I get?
Choose "every sheet" and you get a ZIP containing one CSV per sheet, each named after the sheet it came from. A CSV is a single table by definition, so there is no correct way to put several sheets in one file — combining them would silently interleave unrelated data.