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XLSX → TSV

Convert Excel (XLSX) to TSV

The awkward part of this direction is that a spreadsheet cell is not text. It has a type, a format and a displayed value that may differ from what is stored, and a conversion has to decide which one to write.

How to do it

  1. Drop the .xlsx onto the editor. The first sheet is read; there is nothing to configure.
  2. Look at what arrived. Dates and numbers are written as their stored values, which is occasionally not what the cell appeared to say.
  3. Export as TSV, choosing the line ending and whether to include a byte order mark.

Do it in the editor

What usually goes wrong

  • Formatted versus stored values

    A cell displaying 12.3% stores 0.123. What you get is the stored value, because that is the one that survives arithmetic.

  • Merged cells

    A merged block belongs to its top-left cell; the rest of the block arrives empty. Worth checking before assuming a column is broken.

  • Password protection

    An encrypted workbook cannot be opened in the browser. There is no server here to send it to, which is a feature and, in this one case, a limit.

Only the first sheet is read. If you need another, save it as its own workbook first.