Excel Tools

Convert Excel to CSV with the delimiter and encoding you need

Pick an .xlsx, .xls or .ods file, choose a sheet or all of them, and download a CSV that the next program reads correctly: accents intact, the right delimiter and no surprises with dates or decimals.

No file at hand?

How to convert Excel to CSV

  1. Choose the workbook. .xlsx, .xlsm, .xlsb, .xls or .ods. The sheets are listed with their size; hidden sheets are marked.
  2. Pick a sheet or all of them. One sheet gives one CSV file; all sheets give a zip with one CSV per sheet.
  3. Choose delimiter and encoding. The preview shows the first lines exactly as they will be written, so you can check accents, decimals and dates before downloading.
  4. Download. If you chose Windows-1252 and some characters do not exist in it, you see which ones and where before anything is saved.

Private by design: no upload

The workbook is opened in your browser with the open-source SheetJS library, in a background thread. Nothing is sent to a server, so price lists, customer data or payroll exports stay on your device. You can check it in the Network tab of your browser's developer tools.

Excel to CSV UTF-8: why the BOM matters

A CSV file does not say which character encoding it uses. Excel decides by looking for a byte order mark (BOM), three invisible bytes at the start of the file. With a BOM, Excel reads the file as UTF-8 and “São Paulo”, “Müller” or “€ 25” display correctly. Without it, a double-clicked CSV is read with the computer's legacy code page (usually Windows-1252), and the same text turns into “São Paulo” or “€ 25”.

That is why UTF-8 with BOM is the default here and matches Excel's own “CSV UTF-8” format. Choose UTF-8 without BOM when the file goes to a database import, a script or a web service that does not expect the BOM; some older tools show it as stray characters “” in the first column name. Choose Windows-1252 only when an old program explicitly asks for ANSI.

Windows-1252: which characters fit

Windows-1252 stores each character in one byte, so it only has room for 251 characters: ASCII, the accented letters of Western European languages, and symbols such as €, “ ”, – and ™. Polish, Czech, Turkish, Greek or Cyrillic letters, Chinese, arrows and emoji do not exist in it. When you export to Windows-1252, every missing character is counted and listed with its first line, and you choose whether to replace it with the closest letter (ő becomes o) or a question mark, or to switch to UTF-8.

Delimiter, quotes and line endings

How to save as CSV in Excel itself

In Excel, File › Save As offers “CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited)” and “CSV (Comma delimited)”. Both save only the active sheet, and the delimiter follows your regional settings, so on European computers the “comma delimited” file actually uses semicolons. To change it, you have to change the list separator in the Windows regional settings or the decimal separator in Excel's advanced options. This converter lets you choose the delimiter, the encoding and the sheets directly, without touching your system settings.

Going the other way? Convert CSV to Excel with automatic delimiter and encoding detection. If a CSV already shows “é” instead of “é”, fix the CSV encoding. And if your data has IDs with leading zeros that must survive a round trip, read how to open a CSV without losing zeros.

Known limitations

Frequently asked questions

Is this Excel to CSV converter really free?

Yes. It is 100% free, with no usage limits, no account and no sign-up. There is no paid plan and no feature is locked.

Are my Excel files uploaded to a server?

No. The workbook is opened and converted inside your browser. The page only downloads its own code and the open-source SheetJS library from this site; the contents and names of your files are never sent anywhere. If you accept analytics cookies, Google Analytics receives anonymous usage data such as page views, never your data or file names.

Which encoding should I choose?

UTF-8 with BOM if the CSV will be opened in Excel: the BOM is what tells Excel the file is UTF-8, so accents and symbols display correctly. UTF-8 without BOM for databases, scripts and most web services. Windows-1252 only for old software that requires ANSI; characters outside it are flagged before you download.

How do I export all sheets to CSV?

Choose “All sheets” in the sheet list. A CSV only holds one table, so you get a zip with one CSV file per sheet, each named after its sheet.

Comma or semicolon: which delimiter should I use?

Use the one the receiving program expects. Excel in countries that write decimals with a comma (most of Europe and Latin America) opens semicolon files directly; US and UK settings expect commas. Tab-delimited files avoid the question when the data itself contains commas or semicolons.

What happens to formulas, dates and formatting?

Formulas are exported as the result saved in the file. Dates are written in the format you choose (ISO 8601 by default). Fonts, colours, merged cells, charts and comments cannot be stored in a CSV and are dropped; merged cells keep their value in the first cell.

Can it open password-protected or very large workbooks?

Files encrypted with an opening password cannot be read; remove the password in Excel first. There is no size limit or quota, but the whole workbook is loaded in memory, so very large .xlsx files (over about 100 MB) may fail on devices with little memory.

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