Excel to Text
DataExtract plain text from Excel with tab or custom delimiter output and batch sheet processing. Choose tab or a custom delimiter process several sheets at once.
Related Tools
About Excel to Text
This Excel to text extractor uses SheetJS to pull plain text from xlsx and xls spreadsheets locally in your browser. The output uses tab or custom delimiters for columns and newlines for rows, producing flat text that any text editor can open. You can select a specific worksheet or batch process multiple worksheets, exporting each one independently. Plain text gives up nearly all visual styling in exchange for extreme versatility: it imports into legacy systems that cannot read Excel, feeds shell pipelines that search with grep or awk, and drops into version control where git diff shows each cell-level change. SheetJS converts Excel date serial numbers to readable ISO 8601 strings and renders numbers, dates, and percentages as text. Confirm date and percentage formatting is what you expect before exporting so values do not silently change meaning. Because everything runs locally and is discarded when you are done, sensitive spreadsheets stay on your device.
How to Use
- Open the Excel to Text tool
- Import or paste the data to process
- Adjust the output options as needed
- Click the Process button; results appear in real time
- Copy or export the result
Use Cases
- Command-line processing — Convert Excel data to tab-separated text for searching and processing via grep, awk, and sed.
- Legacy system import — Transform Excel data to plain text for import into legacy systems or AS400 terminals that do not support Excel.
- Version control diff — Convert Excel config data to text for Git management, using diff to track each data change.
- Quick data preview — Extract Excel content to plain text for quick browsing without installing Office software.
- Log format conversion — Convert Excel-maintained error code tables to text for embedding in log analysis scripts as reference.
- Pre-import validation — Export data to plain text before a database load so you can verify column alignment in a terminal.
FAQ
What delimiter does the output use?
Tab is the default column delimiter; you can customize it to comma, semicolon, pipe, or any character. Newlines separate rows.
How are dates displayed?
SheetJS converts Excel date serial numbers to ISO 8601 text strings (e.g. 2024-01-15) for readability.
Can it handle multiple worksheets?
Yes. You can select a specific worksheet or process all worksheets, each output as an independent text block.
What information is lost in plain text?
Plain text does not preserve cell styles, formulas, charts, or merged cells; only data values and row-column structure are retained.
Will very large workbooks be slow?
Parsing runs locally and stays smooth for hundreds of thousands of cells; for huge workbooks export worksheet by worksheet and watch browser memory.
Are the files uploaded?
No. All parsing runs locally via SheetJS and the file is discarded when you are done, never leaving your device, so sensitive tables are safe.