Convert Excel to CSV.
Save any sheet of an .xlsx, .xls or .ods workbook as a clean CSV for importing into accounting software, mailing lists, databases or online shops. Preview it first, pick the separator, and keep special characters intact.
Excel to CSV: quick facts
Save any sheet of an Excel workbook as a CSV file.
Updated
- Price
- Free. No sign-up, no watermark.
- Opens
- .xlsx, .xls, .xlsm, .xlsb and .ods.
- Sheets
- Pick one sheet, or All sheets for one CSV each in a .zip.
- Options
- Comma, semicolon or tab; a UTF-8 marker so £ and accents show correctly in Excel.
- Formulas
- Saved as their calculated values, as shown in the sheet.
- Privacy
- Your spreadsheet is read in your browser and never uploaded.
How to convert an Excel file to CSV
The workbook is opened by SheetJS, a spreadsheet library running inside this page. Each cell is written out as the value you see in Excel, separated by your chosen character, one row per line.
Add your workbook
Drop in an .xlsx, .xls, .xlsm or .ods file and see a preview.
Pick the sheet and separator
Choose one sheet or all of them, then comma, semicolon or tab.
Download the CSV
One sheet saves as a .csv; all sheets come back as a .zip.
Tips for a CSV that imports first time
Most import errors come down to a handful of things in the spreadsheet, not the conversion.
- One header row, no titles above itImport tools expect the column names on the very first line. Delete any report titles, logos or blank rows above the headers before converting.
- Unmerge cells firstMerged cells have no CSV equivalent: the value lands in the first cell and the rest come out empty. Unmerge and fill them in Excel if every row needs the value.
- Keep leading zerosPhone numbers and codes like 007 lose their zeros if Excel stored them as numbers. Format the column as Text in Excel and re-type them, and the zeros will come through.
- Going the other way?To turn a CSV into data for a web app, see CSV to JSON. To share a sheet so it can’t be edited, use Excel to PDF.
Like every Altto tool, this runs on your device — nothing you add is uploaded. How Altto works
sheet per CSV. CSV is plain text with no tabs or pages, which is exactly why almost every system can import it.
Which separator should I choose?
Pick the one the system you’re importing into expects. If it doesn’t say, comma is the safe default.
| Separator | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Comma , | UK and US systems, Google Sheets, most online shops, mailing tools and accounting imports | None: text containing commas is wrapped in quotes automatically |
| Semicolon ; | Excel in European regions (France, Germany, Spain and others) where the comma is the decimal mark | Some UK and US importers expect commas |
| Tab | Pasting into other spreadsheets and databases, data with lots of commas | Saved with a .csv name; rename to .tsv if a system asks for it |
Frequently asked questions
What carries over to CSV and what doesn’t. For a different direction, try JSON to CSV.