How to convert .xlsx to .txt?

Question

I want to know if there is a Linux tool or a script available to convert .xlsx file to .txt.

Answer 1

The ssconvert tool that comes with Gnumeric can convert xlsx files to text:

ssconvert Book1.xlsx file.csv

Answer 2

Another way is rename it as .zip and unzip it as all the .***x files are just zipped folders containing xml. Inside you will find a folder "xl" with a subfolder "worksheets", inside is an xml file for each worksheet. The format of them is pretty simple and should be easy to parse with any of the xml packages.

Answer 3

If it's just textual/numerical data (which I have to assume it is, otherwise a text file would be a bit ambitious), then you could try xlsx2csv to generate CSV files from your spreadsheets.

I can't vouch for its effectiveness, but it's worth a try.

Answer 4

I do not know about a tool in linux, but you can use Google Docs.

You upload the spreadsheet there and you can then export it as txt.

Answer 5

Not a shell script, (unlike the script mentioned in Andy's post from Oct 20 '10 at 8:44), but a python script:

with the same name, xlsx2csv

This exports date values as floats though:

2012/07/01 => 41091,

"2012/07/01 01:00:00" => 41091.0416666667

xlsx2csv.py --help 
Usage: xlsx2csv.py [options] infile [outfile]

Options:
  --version             show program's version number and exit


     -h, --help            show this help message and exit
      -s SHEETID, --sheet=SHEETID
                            sheet no to convert (0 for all sheets)
      -d DELIMITER, --delimiter=DELIMITER
                            delimiter - csv columns delimiter, 'tab' or 'x09' for
                            tab (comma is default)
      -p SHEETDELIMITER, --sheetdelimiter=SHEETDELIMITER
                            sheets delimiter used to separate sheets, pass '' if
                            you don't want delimiters (default '--------')
      -f DATEFORMAT, --dateformat=DATEFORMAT
                            override date/time format (ex. %Y/%m/%d)
      -i, --ignoreempty     skip empty lines
      -r, --recursive       convert recursively

Answer 6

I used the command below to convert all my xlsx files in the current directory (must have Libre Office installed):

for i   in *.xlsx; do  libreoffice --headless --convert-to csv "$i" ; done

Libreoffice is really good to read Excel and write CSVs. See if your executable isn't called scalc.

Answer 7

Not command line, but OpenOffice can read .xslx files and save as csv. Its probably already on your Linux machine.