Convert Excel to Markdown

Excel to Markdown starts with workbook structure

Converting Excel to Markdown sounds like copying a rectangle and adding pipes. The rectangle is the easy part. A workbook can contain many worksheets, one active tab, hidden and very-hidden tabs, concealed rows and columns, merged cells, formulas, and values whose visible form lives in a separate style table. This converter reads those distinctions before it writes anything. The active visible worksheet is selected by default; concealed worksheet data is labeled and requires a deliberate choice.

The A1 range is equally deliberate. A real sheet may contain a title in B4, a table several rows lower, a second table after a blank separator, and notes far to the right. Treating every non-empty row as one table collapses those boundaries. Here the workbook’s used area is shown, and the exact rectangular range remains editable. Internal empty rows stay empty rather than disappearing during conversion.

Displayed values and formula text answer different questions

An .xlsx formula normally carries two things: the expression and the last result saved by Excel or another spreadsheet. Displayed values mode uses that cached result. Formula text mode writes the expression beginning with an equals sign. Neither mode evaluates the workbook in this page. Recalculation would require Excel’s function library, dependency graph, locale behavior, external links and volatile functions; pretending a small browser converter can reproduce all of that would be less reliable than using the value already stored in the file.

Some workbooks produced by scripts contain a formula but no cached result. In displayed-value mode such a cell is empty, because the file contains no answer to show. The receipt counts it and formula-text mode still exposes the expression. Cached values can also be stale when the workbook was saved without recalculation. The tool therefore calls them saved results, not verified or freshly calculated answers.

Why 0.125 may need to become 12.5%

Excel stores many displayed values as plain numbers plus a format code. A percentage shown as 12.5% may be stored as 0.125; a date shown as 2026-08-12 is usually a day count; a postal code such as 00123 may depend on a five-zero number format. The local reader applies an explicit subset covering dates, percentages, currency, decimal grouping and zero padding. These are visible in the grid before export.

Excel’s complete formatting language also has conditional sections, colors, fractions, scientific forms, locale directives and accounting spacing. A selected numeric cell using a format outside the supported subset is left as its stored value and counted. That is an intentional boundary: the page does not silently invent a display string or imply that fonts, conditional formatting and workbook themes can survive in a plain Markdown table.

Merged and hidden cells need visible policies

Pipe-style Markdown has no equivalent of Excel’s merged ranges. Repeating a merged value into every covered position preserves context for each column; leaving covered positions blank resembles the original sheet more closely. Both are useful and neither is universally right, so the normalized preview shows the selected policy. The source merge itself is counted on the receipt and is never described as preserved.

Hidden rows and columns are omitted by default. Each can be included with its own switch, and a hidden or very-hidden worksheet produces an additional notice when selected. Hidden does not mean secret or encrypted—it is only a workbook presentation state—but exporting it without a visible decision can still disclose material the author did not expect in a copied table.

What goes into the Markdown table

Pipes and backslashes inside cells are escaped. Cell line breaks become explicit <br> breaks, while literal text such as <script> or <em> is entity-escaped so a Markdown renderer cannot activate it as raw HTML. If the first selected row is data rather than headings, turn off the heading choice and neutral Column 1, Column 2 labels are generated. No source row is silently promoted or discarded.

Modern .xlsx files and spreadsheet clipboard cells are supported. The older binary .xls format, Google Sheet URLs, charts, images, pivot tables, macros and workbook-wide style preservation are not. Opening a workbook, changing the range, copying the result and downloading the complete .md file all happen locally in this tab.