Microsoft Excel Tutorial - How to Convert CSV to XLS
Before we begin, it is important to realize what each of these formats is. CSV (Comma Separated Values) is a format that allows you to enter data that would appear in a set format using commas to separate the different values. XLS (Microsoft Office Excel Workbook... I don't know why they chose XLS as the acronym) is the format that Microsoft Excel recognizes for files that it will need to open as a workbook.
With that in mind, here are the steps to converting a CSV to XLS.
1. Create CSV
CSV is a format that doesn't require Microsoft Excel. Open Notepad and enter the following on line 1 (without the quotes): "Bob, 40" and the following (without quotes) on line 2: "Susan, 50", and this (no quotes) on line 3: "James, 60".
Your Notepad window should have three lines like this:
Bob, 40
Susan, 50
James, 60
To save this as a CSV, click File -> Save As. Call it anything, I will call it "Ages.csv". Make sure to have the ".csv" extension at the end. Also make sure for "Save as type" you select "All Files". Select a location to save the file and give it a name and then click Save.
2. Open CSV in Excel
Now close Notepad and navigate to the folder you saved the CSV file. You will notice the icon for the file looks like an Excel file. Double click on the icon to open this file in Excel. You will see that Cells A1, A2, and A3 have the names of the people and cells B1, B2, and B3 have their ages.
3. Re-Save with Excel
The next step to converting CSV to XLS is to re-save this using Excel. With this file open in Excel, click File -> Save As. Give it any name you like (you don't need to put any extension this time) and make sure for "Save as type" you select "Microsoft Office Excel Workbook (*.xls)". Once finished, click Save.
That is all there is to converting from CSV to XLS. The new XLS version can now be opened and used like a workbook in Microsoft Excel.
The most important thing to take from this is CSV can be written even with Notepad, but an XLS is exclusive to Microsoft Excel. So when you do a conversion from CSV to XLS like we did, you are converting it into a format where you can use all the Microsoft Excel functionality.
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11 Comments
Post a Commentthanks so much that was very explicit and practical. you guys are the best!
Thanx i enjoyed the step by step instruction. Really helpful
Thanks for all of you. Yes, It is very easy using Excel menu, Select column, goto Data > text to column > select comma as the delimiter. thats all
Not helpful at all. I still have the same jumbled mess.
Thank You! I was really frustrated until I followed Your "easy to follow instructions". I still was a little unsure of the prompts that followed when I was making the converstion, but figured them out and it WORKED!
This is not a true conversion. Once this is saved into xls file you cannot open up a new workbook and special paste the date.
XLS stands for XL (Excel) Spreadsheet or Sheet, before they were called workbooks
The menu is actually Data/Text to Column. Pick 'delimited' then pick 'comma' as the delimiter and click Finish. Delete whatever columns you don't want and you're done.
Figured it out how to delimit... just open in Excel and pick Data/Text to Table. Voila! The simplest things, I tell ya. Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees. Thanks for the inspiration to find a fix!
Exactly Yvonne! I can just change the file extension from .csv to .xls and accomplish the same thing described at length here. We're looking for how to delimit the data. Thanks.