Open an Excel file without Microsoft Office — free.
Someone sent you an .xlsx file and you don't have Microsoft Office installed. You
just need to see what's inside — or get the data somewhere you can use it. Upload the file here and
we'll convert it to a plain CSV you can open in Google Sheets, Numbers, LibreOffice, or any text
editor. Nothing to install, no account to create.
What the converter does
Upload your .xlsx and we read it entirely in your browser — the data never leaves
your computer. You pick which sheet to export (if there's more than one), and we hand you back a
properly encoded UTF-8 (Unicode) CSV (comma-separated values) file. That means names with
accents, prices, phone numbers, and dates all come through as-is — not scrambled into garbage
characters the way Excel sometimes does when it saves a CSV on a Windows machine with regional
settings. You can open a CSV in Google Sheets, Numbers, LibreOffice, or any text editor.
Why this happens — and what you actually need
Excel's .xlsx format is a ZIP archive containing XML files, so you can't just rename
it and open it in Notepad. Without Office (or a Google Drive account), most people are stuck.
The file just sits there.
What you usually want isn't the full Excel experience — you just need the data: the rows, the columns, the numbers and names inside. A CSV gives you exactly that in a format literally every app on the planet can open.
What won't transfer — and why that's fine
A CSV is text only, so formulas get replaced with their last calculated value, and visual
formatting (bold, colors, merged cells) doesn't carry over. For most "I just need the data"
situations, that's exactly what you want. If a cell shows $42.00 in Excel, the CSV
will contain 42 — the real number, not the display format. You can re-format in
whatever app you open it with.
Works anywhere — phone, Chromebook, Mac, Windows
Because it runs entirely in the browser, it works on any device. Got an xlsx file on your iPhone that you need to open right now? Same steps: tap to upload, download the CSV, open it in the Numbers app or email it to yourself. No app store, no subscription.
Need to see the structure of your file first — tab names, column headers, row counts — before converting? Try What's inside this Excel file for a quick plain-language summary.
Want to run this from a terminal or wire it into an AI agent? Install
xlsx-for-ai and use
the xlsx_convert tool directly — no upload, no browser.