Convert Excel to CSV

Convert Excel to CSV File

Comma-separated values (CSV) are a useful feature used vividly in the keep the tabulated data in simple text format. They have significance in the application and programming world to best utilization of the data through importing or exporting of data from the excel files. The CSV format helps the users to a quick review of the data and make corrections if required. The changes, such as quoting values and delimiter, are easily done.

It is possible because data is presented in a simple format to easily understand by a new user without having much experience with it. The below-presented information helps to examples to understand the converting process of excel data to CSV without causing any damage to the symbols and special characters.

How to Convert Excel to CSV?

Here are examples of converting Excel to CSV File.

Example #1 – Converting of Excel files into CSV

This example illustrates the conversion of a simple Excel sheet into CSV format

• In the first step, move to the Microsoft Office button (2007 version) or File tab (2013 version) and select the ‘save as’ option or press shortcut of F12 to display the save as dialogue box.

• Type the name of the file in the file name box and select the save as type as CSV comma-delimited. The dialogue box, as shown in the below screenshot.

• Select the destination folder to store the file for future use and click on the Save button.

• After that, two dialogue boxes are displayed. One indicates that the active Excel sheet is going to be saved in CSV format, and the second indicates the message of several features not supported by the CSV format.

Example #2 – Converting of Excel files into CSV Using UTF-8

This example illustrates the Excel CSV UTF-8 with CSV. When an excel sheet contained special characters and data in other languages, these are not displayed properly. To display properly, the excel file is converted using UTF-8 shown in the figure.

1. First, the excel sheet should be converted into the Unicode text format using the same type as a .txt. This results in a tab space between the data in a line.
2. The tab space is replaced through comma convert data into a comma-delimited file.
3. In this step, file format .txt is converted into CSV through the ‘save as’ option or changing the excel file name with extension .csv

Example #3 – Exporting Excel Files into CSV Using UTF-16

Converting Excel to CSV is easy through UTF-16 is done in two steps.

• Select the ‘save as’ option through the Microsoft Office button and choose the Unicode text format .txt under the save as type box and click on ok.

• Right-click on the file in windows explorer and change the file format CSV.

Example #4 – Use of Google Spreadsheets to Convert the Data

Google spreadsheets are helpful in converting data to CSV format over the internet following five steps.

• Go to Google Drive click on Spreadsheet.

• Import an existing file or create a new sheet in excel with data

• Upload the file to Google spreadsheet from the computer and choose the replace spreadsheet option.

• Next, click on import data.

• Finally, move to the File tab, then choose download as Comma-separated values to convert into CSV, as illustrated in the figure.

Explanation of Converting Excel to CSV File

A user needs to use any of the technology available to convert the Excel sheet into CSV format. Proper dealing of warnings and security messages is required while opening or converting into CSV files and making changes to the formats. It is easy to convert the data presented in any language easily using UTF-8.

First of all, it needs to convert the data into text format by changing the file format to .txt. The data is displayed, as shown below.

The data should be converted into the delimited comma format by replacing the tab space with a comma. After that, the file format should be saved to.CSV from text format.

How to Use CSV Files?

CSV files are used by the Data Scientist to a visualization of tabular data. These are easily retrieved into various applications in creating databases in excel and spreadsheets. There are two ways in which CSV files are used by the web developer, including

• Easy to import to databases irrespective of the software using for developing a website
• Better management of the high volume of data is possible since data in plain text format without any formulae.

To use the CSV files effectively, needs to import them into applications like databases and convert them into tables to do further analysis on the data. It increases the ease of making decisions accurately.

For example, when we imported customer data into an Excel sheet, the address of customers is in different columns, and time takes to copy the data from different cells. CSV helps in handling this situation better by separating data through commas.

Things to Remember While Converting Excel to CSV

The following things should remember to convert excel to CSV files successfully.

• It needs to make the right selection of the different CSV formats available in the Excel sheet, such as CSV Macintosh, CSV MS-DOS, and Unicode text. The appropriate format should be selected based on user requirements.
• At a time, only one sheet of excel workbook that is active is converted into CSV format.
• When data imported into the word processing application, tab space should be replaced with a comma to convert it successfully to the comma-separated values.
• A user can use free tools available on the internet to convert the Excel sheet into CSV format without much effort.
• It is impossible to convert all sheets of excel workbook at a time.

Recommended Articles

This has been a guide to Convert Excel to CSV File. Here we discuss how to convert Excel to CSV File along with practical examples and a downloadable excel template. You may learn more about excel from the following articles –

• Excel UNICODE
• How to Import Data in Excel?
• CSV vs Excel
• AutoSave in Excel
• Divide Cell in Excel