Convert XLS to CSV on command line

Question

How could I convert an XLS file to a CSV file on the windows command line.

The machine has Microsoft Office 2000 installed. I\'m open to installing OpenOffice if it\

Answer 1

Why not write your own?

I see from your profile you have at least some C#/.NET experience. I'd create a Windows console application and use a free Excel reader to read in your Excel file(s). I've used Excel Data Reader available from CodePlex without any problem (one nice thing: this reader doesn't require Excel to be installed). You can call your console application from the command line.

If you find yourself stuck post here and I'm sure you'll get help.

Answer 2

I had a need to extract several cvs from different worksheets, so here is a modified version of plang code that allows you to specify the worksheet name.

if WScript.Arguments.Count < 3 Then
    WScript.Echo "Please specify the sheet, the source, the destination files. Usage: ExcelToCsv <sheetName> <xls/xlsx source file> <csv destination file>"
    Wscript.Quit
End If

csv_format = 6

Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

src_file = objFSO.GetAbsolutePathName(Wscript.Arguments.Item(1))
dest_file = objFSO.GetAbsolutePathName(WScript.Arguments.Item(2))

Dim oExcel
Set oExcel = CreateObject("Excel.Application")

Dim oBook
Set oBook = oExcel.Workbooks.Open(src_file)

oBook.Sheets(WScript.Arguments.Item(0)).Select
oBook.SaveAs dest_file, csv_format

oBook.Close False
oExcel.Quit

Answer 3

There's an Excel OLEDB data provider built into Windows; you can use this to 'query' the Excel sheet via ADO.NET and write the results to a CSV file. There's a small amount of coding required, but you shouldn't need to install anything on the machine.

Answer 4

Building on what Jon of All Trades has provided, the following (~n) removed the pesky double extension issue: FOR /f "delims=" %%i IN ('DIR *.xlsx /b') DO ExcelToCSV.vbs "%%i" "%%~ni.csv"

Answer 5

A small expansion on ScottF's groovy VB script: this batch file will loop through the .xlsx files in a directory and dump them into *.csv files:

FOR /f "delims=" %%i IN ('DIR *.xlsx /b') DO ExcelToCSV.vbs "%%i" "%%i.csv"

Note: You may change extension .xlsx to .xls andname of script ExcelToCSV to XlsToCsv

Answer 6

I tried ScottF VB solution and got it to work. However I wanted to convert a multi-tab(workbook) excel file into a single .csv file.

This did not work, only one tab(the one that is highlighted when I open it via excel) got copied.

Is any one aware of a script that can convert a multi-tab excel file into a single .csv file?