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Excel to CSV Converter

Our free Excel to CSV converter turns a spreadsheet into a plain-text CSV file right in your browser. Upload an .xlsx or .xls file, pick the sheet and the delimiter, and download a real .csv file — no upload, no sign-up, no watermark. A CSV file opens in almost any spreadsheet app, database, or script — the standard way to move table data between programs.

How it works

A spreadsheet file is a small archive of structured data. An .xlsx file is a zipped bundle of XML documents, one per sheet, plus shared strings and styles; the older .xls format packs the same ideas into a binary file. A CSV file is the opposite: plain text, one row per line, with the columns separated by a delimiter — usually a comma. That plainness is the whole point: almost every spreadsheet app, database, and script can read a CSV, so it is the standard hand-off format when data moves between programs, and the format most tools ask for when you import a contact list or price table.

When you pick a file, the tool first checks the ending and the type, accepting .xlsx, .xls, and .csv. It then reads the file with SheetJS, a spreadsheet library that runs entirely in your browser, and opens the workbook. The sheet menu lists every sheet the workbook contains, so a workbook with "January", "February", and "Summary" lets you convert each one on its own — one sheet becomes one CSV file, because a CSV cannot hold several sheets. A single-sheet workbook picks that sheet for you. A password-protected workbook, or a file that only pretends to be a spreadsheet, is rejected with a plain message instead of a broken download.

The conversion itself reads the chosen sheet as a grid of values. Formulas are replaced by the values they calculate, because a CSV cannot hold a formula — a cell that says =SUM(A1:A5) becomes its answer, such as 42. Dates and numbers are written out as the text you would see in the cell, so a date stays readable rather than turning into a serial number. Empty cells become empty fields, and trailing empty columns are dropped, so a sheet with values in columns A to C does not gain a tail of empty commas.

Then the grid is written out line by line with your choices applied: comma, semicolon, tab, or pipe as the delimiter. Quoting follows the standard rule by default: a field is wrapped in double quotes only when it contains the delimiter, a quote, or a line break, and any quote inside it is doubled — so the value say "hi", now becomes "say ""hi"", now", which a proper CSV reader parses back exactly. "Quote every field" wraps all of them, and "Never quote" is offered for tools that ask for it, though it can break values that contain the delimiter. The line-ending menu gives you Windows CRLF, which Excel on Windows expects, or plain LF for scripts and web tools. You can also drop the first row when it holds column names you do not want, trim stray spaces from every cell, and skip rows that are completely empty.

The result shows a preview of the first 20 lines, with the row and column counts, the sheet name, and the file size, so you can check the shape of the data before you download it. The download is named after your original file with the ending changed to .csv, or the name you typed, and a Copy button puts the same text on your clipboard. Because every step happens on your computer, there is no waiting for an upload and no copy of your spreadsheet sitting on someone else's server.

Worked example

Suppose you keep a small contact sheet called customers.xlsx. It has one sheet, "Customers", with three columns and three rows:

Name, Age, City — then Alice, 30, New York — then Bob, 25, Chicago.

Step 1: you click "Choose an Excel file" and pick customers.xlsx. The tool opens the workbook and shows the sheet name and the row and column counts under the file picker, with "Customers" already picked in the sheet menu.
Step 2: you leave the delimiter on Comma, quoting on "Quote only when needed", and the line ending on Windows, then click "Convert to CSV". The tool reads the sheet as a grid of values and writes it out.
Step 3: the preview shows exactly three lines: Name,Age,City, then Alice,30,New York, then Bob,25,Chicago. The result reads "3 rows × 3 columns — sheet Customers — 50 bytes". You click "Download .csv" and customers.csv lands in your Downloads folder, ready to import anywhere.

If the tool you were importing into used semicolons instead, pick "Semicolon" and convert again — the same data comes out as Name;Age;City, then Alice;30;New York, then Bob;25;Chicago. And if a name held a comma, such as "Smith, John", the quoting rule wraps it as "Smith, John",30,New York, so the comma inside the name is never mistaken for a column break.

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