Convert Excel spreadsheets (.xlsx, .xls) to CSV and CSV back to Excel — with sheet selection, custom delimiters, and Excel-safe UTF-8. Free and private.
Excel to CSV Converter is a free, browser-based tool
from UseToolSuite's
Document & PDF Tools collection.
All processing happens locally on your device — your data is never uploaded to any server.
Use the tool below, then scroll down for detailed documentation, frequently asked questions, and related resources.
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Drop an Excel file (.xlsx, .xls) or a .csv here
Excel → CSV and CSV → Excel, detected automatically
100% Private No Upload
Converting…
CSV parsed successfully
Excel to CSV — Without Opening Excel, Without Uploading Data
The Excel to CSV Converter turns spreadsheets into clean, import-ready CSV files and rebuilds real .xlsx workbooks from CSV — entirely in your browser. Spreadsheets are where the sensitive data lives: customer lists, payroll, financials. Converting them should not require handing the file to a stranger's server, and here it never does.
Built for the Real-World CSV Mess
CSV looks trivial until locales get involved. Turkish, German, and French Excel installations expect semicolon-separated files because the comma is their decimal separator; Excel on any locale silently misreads UTF-8 accents unless a byte-order mark is present. The delimiter selector and the Excel-safe BOM option exist precisely for these two failure modes — the ones behind almost every "my CSV is broken" support thread.
Where the CSV Goes Next
CSV is the lingua franca of data import: CRMs, e-commerce platforms, banks, and databases all speak it. After converting, the CSV Viewer & Editor lets you inspect and clean the rows, JSON ⇄ CSV reshapes the data for APIs, and CSV to SQL generates INSERT statements for direct database loading.
The delimiter problem, explained once and for all
CSV stands for comma-separated values, but in much of the world the comma is busy being the decimal separator — 3,14 is π in Istanbul, Berlin, and Paris. Excel resolves the conflict per locale: on Turkish or German systems it reads and writes semicolon-separated files while still calling them CSV. The consequence is the classic support ticket: a comma-separated export opens as one giant column on a colleague’s machine.
The resolution is knowing your audience. Sending to US/UK Excel or to virtually any programming environment: comma. Sending to continental-European or Turkish Excel users: semicolon. Unsure, or the data itself contains many commas: tab — every Excel locale parses tab-separated files identically, and free-text fields rarely contain tabs. The delimiter selector in this tool is those three choices, because those three cover the real world.
Encoding: the other silent corrupter
A CSV file is just bytes; nothing in it declares its character encoding. Excel, uniquely among modern software, assumes a legacy code page unless the file starts with a UTF-8 byte-order mark — so ş, ğ, é, and ü arrive as mojibake in a file every other program reads perfectly. The Excel-safe BOM option (on by default here) prepends the three magic bytes. The trade-off is honest: a few strict Unix tools treat the BOM as unexpected leading bytes, so disable it when the target is a script rather than a spreadsheet.
Round-tripping and its limits
Excel → CSV → Excel preserves values and layout but sheds everything CSV cannot express: formulas become their last computed values, formatting and multiple sheets disappear, and Excel’s type guessing on re-import can mangle identifiers (leading zeros, long numbers turned into 1.23E+15). For a one-way export into another system this is irrelevant; for archival of a workbook with live formulas, keep the XLSX as the master and export CSV snapshots. To inspect or clean the data between steps, the CSV Viewer & Editor shows the actual parsed grid — the fastest way to confirm the delimiter and encoding landed correctly.
How to Use This Tool
1
Drop your file
Drop an Excel workbook to get CSV, or a CSV file to get a real .xlsx — the tool detects the direction automatically.
2
Pick the sheet and delimiter
Multi-sheet workbooks show a sheet selector; choose comma, semicolon, or tab depending on where the CSV is headed.
3
Download the result
Preview the output first, then download. The UTF-8 BOM option guarantees accented characters open correctly in Excel.
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Essential terms and definitions related to Excel to CSV Converter.
CSV (RFC 4180)
The comma-separated values format as standardized: fields separated by commas, records by line breaks, with quotes protecting fields that contain commas, quotes, or newlines. Real-world CSVs deviate constantly, which is why delimiter options exist.
Byte-Order Mark (BOM)
An invisible EF BB BF byte sequence at the start of a file signaling UTF-8 encoding. Redundant in most software but load-bearing for Excel, which otherwise misreads accented characters in CSV files.
Cached Formula Value
The last computed result a spreadsheet stores alongside each formula. Converters read this cache — so a workbook saved with stale calculations exports the stale values it displays, not freshly recomputed ones.
Frequently Asked Questions
My workbook has several sheets — what happens to them?
CSV is by definition a single flat table, so each sheet must export separately. The tool lists every sheet in the workbook and converts the one you select; switching the selector re-converts instantly, so exporting all sheets is a matter of a few clicks rather than re-uploading the file each time, as paywalled converters typically require.
Why does Excel put all my CSV data into one column?
Locale mismatch. In locales where the comma is the decimal separator (Turkish, German, French among others), Excel expects semicolon-delimited CSV files and refuses to split on commas. Export with the semicolon delimiter option for those locales — or use tab, which every locale parses correctly.
Are formulas preserved in the conversion?
CSV stores values, not formulas — the format has no concept of calculation. The converter exports each cell's last calculated result, which is what you want when feeding data to scripts, databases, and import pipelines. Going the other direction, CSV→Excel produces a clean value-only workbook ready for new formulas.
When should data live in CSV instead of Excel format?
CSV wins wherever software, not people, consumes the data: imports into CRMs and databases, version control (Git diffs CSV line-by-line but sees XLSX as an opaque binary), long-term archival (CSV will be readable in fifty years), and scripting. XLSX wins wherever humans work: multiple sheets, formulas, formatting, data validation. The healthy pattern is XLSX as the working format and CSV as the exchange format — which is exactly the conversion this tool automates in both directions.
Why does my exported CSV show dates as numbers like 45123?
That is Excel's internal date representation leaking out: Excel stores dates as serial numbers counting days since January 1, 1900. It happens when the source cell holds a raw serial without date formatting applied. Fix it at the source — format the column as a date in the spreadsheet before converting — and the exporter will emit the formatted text instead. The converter exports what Excel displays, so what you see in the sheet is what lands in the CSV.
Troubleshooting & Technical Tips
Common errors developers encounter and how to resolve them.
Excel assumes a legacy encoding for .csv files unless a UTF-8 byte-order mark is present. Re-export with the "UTF-8 BOM" option enabled (it is on by default here) — the invisible three-byte prefix tells Excel to read the file as UTF-8, fixing every character without changing the data.
Leading zeros disappear from codes and phone numbers
That happens when Excel opens the CSV, not during conversion — Excel guesses "0212..." is a number and strips the zero. Import the CSV via Excel's Data → From Text/CSV dialog and mark those columns as Text, or convert CSV→XLSX here first, which preserves the values as text.
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