[excel] Convert xlsx file to csv using batch

How do you convert multiple xlsx files to csv files with a batch script?

Adding to @marbel's answer (which is a great suggestion!), here's the script that worked for me on Mac OS X El Captain's Terminal, for batch conversion (since that's what the OP asked). I thought it would be trivial to do a for loop but it wasn't! (had to change the extension by string manipulation and it looks like Mac's bash is a bit different also)

for x in $(ls *.xlsx); do x1=${x%".xlsx"}; in2csv $x > $x1.csv; echo "$x1.csv done."; done

Note:

1. ${x%”.xlsx”} is bash string manipulation which clips .xlsx from the end of the string.
2. in2csv creates separate csv files (doesn’t overwrite the xlsx's).
3. The above won't work if the filenames have white spaces in them. Good to convert white spaces to underscores or something, before running the script.

Alternative way of converting to csv. Use libreoffice:

libreoffice --headless --convert-to csv *

Please be aware that this will only convert the first worksheet of your Excel file.

Get all file item and filter them by suffix and then use PowerShell Excel VBA object to save the excel files to csv files.

$excelApp = New-Object -ComObject Excel.Application 
$excelApp.DisplayAlerts = $false 

$ExcelFiles | ForEach-Object { 
    $workbook = $excelApp.Workbooks.Open($_.FullName) 
    $csvFilePath = $_.FullName -replace "\.xlsx$", ".csv" 
    $workbook.SaveAs($csvFilePath, [Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.XlFileFormat]::xlCSV) 
    $workbook.Close() 
} 

You can find the complete sample here How to convert Excel xlsx file to csv file in batch by PowerShell

To follow up on the answer by user183038, here is a shell script to batch rename all xlsx files to csv while preserving the file names. The xlsx2csv tool needs to be installed prior to running.

for i in *.xlsx;
 do
  filename=$(basename "$i" .xlsx);
  outext=".csv" 
  xlsx2csv $i $filename$outext
done

Try in2csv!

Usage:

in2csv file.xlsx > file.csv

You need an external tool, in example: SoftInterface.com - Convert XLSX to CSV.

After installing it, you can use following command in your batch:

"c:\Program Files\Softinterface, Inc\Convert XLS\ConvertXLS.EXE" /S"C:\MyExcelFile.xlsx" /F51 /N"Sheet1" /T"C:\MyExcelFile.CSV" /C6 /M1 /V

Needs installed excel as it uses the Excel.Application com object.Save this as .bat file:

@if (@X)==(@Y) @end /* JScript comment
    @echo off


    cscript //E:JScript //nologo "%~f0" %*

    exit /b %errorlevel%

@if (@X)==(@Y) @end JScript comment */


var ARGS = WScript.Arguments;

var xlCSV = 6;

var objExcel = WScript.CreateObject("Excel.Application");
var objWorkbook = objExcel.Workbooks.Open(ARGS.Item(0));
objExcel.DisplayAlerts = false;
objExcel.Visible = false;

var objWorksheet = objWorkbook.Worksheets(ARGS.Item(1))
objWorksheet.SaveAs( ARGS.Item(2), xlCSV);

objExcel.Quit();

It accepts three arguments - the absolute path to the xlsx file, the sheet name and the absolute path to the target csv file:

call toCsv.bat "%cd%\Book1.xlsx" Sheet1 "%cd%\csv.csv"