Convert xlsx to csv in Linux with command line

Question

I m looking for a way to convert xlsx files to csv files on Linux   I do not want to use PHP Perl or anything like that since I m looking at processing several millions of lines  so I need something quick  I found a program on the Ubuntu repos called xls2csv but it will only convert xls  Office 2003  files  which I m currently using  but I need support for the newer Excel files   Any ideas

User · Answer

If you are OK to run Java command line then you can do it with Apache POI HSSF's Excel Extractor. It has a main method that says to be the command line extractor. This one seems to just dump everything out. They point out to this example that converts to CSV. You would have to compile it before you can run it but it too has a main method so you should not have to do much coding per se to make it work.

Another option that might fly but will require some work on the other end is to make your Excel files come to you as Excel XML Data or XML Spreadsheet of whatever MS calls that format these days. It will open a whole new world of opportunities for you to slice and dice it the way you want.

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You can do this with LibreOffice   libreoffice --headless --convert-to csv  filename --outdir  outdir   For reasons not clear to me  you might need to run this with sudo  You can make LibreOffice work with sudo without requiring a password by adding this line to you sudoers file   users ALL  ALL  NOPASSWD  libreoffice

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In bash  I used this libreoffice command to convert all my xlsx files in the current directory   for i   in   xlsx  do  libreoffice --headless --convert-to csv   i    done   It takes care of spaces in the filename    Tried again some years later  and it didn t work  This thread gives some tips  but the quickiest solution was to run as root  or running a sudo libreoffice   Not elegant  but quick    Use the command scalc exe in Windows

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As others said  libreoffice can convert xls files to csv  The problem for me was the sheet selection   This libreoffice Python script does a fine job at converting a single sheet to CSV   Usage is     libreconverter py File xls  Sheet Name  output csv   The only downside  on my end  is that --headless doesn t seem to work  I have a LO window that shows up for a second and then quits  That s OK with me  it s the only tool that does the job rapidly

User · Answer

Using the Gnumeric spreadsheet application which comes which a commandline utility called ssconvert is indeed super simple   find   -name    xlsx  -exec ssconvert -T Gnumeric stf stf csv         and you re done

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If you already have a Desktop environment then I m sure Gnumeric   LibreOffice would work well  but on a headless server  such as Amazon Web Services   they require dozens of dependencies that you also need to install   I found this Python alternative   https   github com dilshod xlsx2csv    easy install xlsx2csv   xlsx2csv file xlsx  gt  newfile csv   Took 2 seconds to install and works like a charm    If you have multiple sheets you can export all at once  or one at a time     xlsx2csv file xlsx --all  gt  all csv   xlsx2csv file xlsx --all -p     gt  all-no-delimiter csv   xlsx2csv file xlsx -s 1  gt  sheet1 csv   He also links to several alternatives built in Bash  Python  Ruby  and Java

User · Answer

The Gnumeric spreadsheet application comes with a command line utility called ssconvert that can convert between a variety of spreadsheet formats     ssconvert Book1 xlsx newfile csv Using exporter Gnumeric stf stf csv    cat newfile csv  Foo Bar Baz 1 2 3 123 6 7 89  2012 05 14   The last Line   To install on Ubuntu   apt-get install gnumeric   To install on Mac   brew install gnumeric

User · Answer

Use csvkit  in2csv data xlsx  gt  data csv   For details check their excellent docs

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If  xlsx file has many sheets  -s flag can be used to get the sheet you want  For example   xlsx2csv  my file xlsx  -s 2 second sheet csv   second sheet csv would contain data of 2nd sheet in my file xlsx

User · Answer

Another option would be to use R via a small bash wrapper for convenience   xlsx2txt    echo   require xlsx  write table read xlsx2 commandArgs TRUE  1   1   stdout    quote F  row names FALSE  col names T  sep   t       Rscript --vanilla -  1 2 gt  dev null    xlsx2txt file xlsx  gt  file txt

[linux] Convert xlsx to csv in Linux with command line

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