Reference > File formats

Easy Data Transform can input from and output to Excel ".xlsx" and ".xls" format files, even if you don't have Excel installed.

Excel format is the native format of the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet application. It is commonly used for exchanging tabular data.

You can specify the sheet name when inputting or outputting Excel files using square brackets, for example:

•MySpreadsheet.xlsx[Sheet1] means the sheet named Sheet1 of file MySpreadsheet.xlsx (the sheet name is not case sensitive).

•MySpreadsheet.xlsx[1] means sheet named 1 of file MySpreadsheet.xlsx (if it exists) or else the first sheet.

•MySpreadsheet.xlsx means the first sheet of file MySpreadsheet.xlsx.

Hyperlinks are read in from Excel in the form anchor|hyperlink.

You can specify how to format columns when outputting to Excel using the Formatting option.

Please note the following limitations of Excel:

•Excel .xlsx files are limited to 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns.

•Excel .xls files are limited to 65,536 rows and 256 columns.

•Date values are input using ISO date format YYYY-MM-DD, regardless of your locale.

•Datetime values are input using ISO date format YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS, regardless of your locale.

•The following characters are not allowed in sheet names: \ / * [ ] : ?

•Writing an Excel file is significantly slower than writing a CSV file for the same dataset.