Is it possible to export an excel file to CSV with Excel online?
To answer and close this question:
Check Office Help https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Differences-between-using-a-workbook-in-the-browser-and-in-Excel-f0dc28ed-b85d-4e1d-be6d-5878005db3b6: "Workbooks in other formats, such as .csv format, are generally not supported in Excel Online."
Looks like there is no way around an offline conversion.
Yes, but not directly. You can copy and paste your content into Google Sheets, and Download as CSV:
I teach college and one of the assignments I give to student in exploring files and structure is to output a spreadsheet I supply as .xls as a .csv file, then examine how the conversion process surrounds data containing commas with quotation marks so as not to confuse the "data" commas from the data delimiting commas. A student ran into this same problem and claimed that he couldn't do the assignment since he used the online version of Excel. In my case the "cure" was simple--the course is designed to also explore free alternative software and an upcoming assignment is to download and install LibreOffice from www.libreoffice.com and try it out, comparing it to MS-Office. I suggest that you do the same. The LibreOffice "Calc" spreadsheet program is quite capable and easily converts a spreadsheet to .csv format with a "save as." LibreOffice is available free for Windows PC and Macs.
Although it is not possible directly, the answer is
Yes, by semi-manual process, using the clipboard and plain text editor.
Follow these steps:
- Select a range to export in Excel online.
- Press Ctrl+C to copy it into the clipboard. (Or click Copy icon.)
- Paste clipboard content into Notepad++ editor.
- Press Ctrl+H to open Replace window
- Replace all
"with""in Extended mode (if none were present, 0 replacements is OK). - Replace all
\twith","in Extended mode. - Replace all
\r\nwith"\r\n"in Extended mode. - Add
"to start of the file. - Add
"to end of the file. - Save your result with csv extension. Your CSV file is now ready.
Explanation:
- Steps 1-3 produce TSV content (Tab-separated values) in text editor.
- Step 5 doubles any double quotes (
") in the content because""is their valid expression in CSV file. - Steps 6-9 surround the values by quotes and separate them by commas instead of tabs.