Excel to Google Sheets

Converting Excel to Google Sheets without losing your work

Google Sheets imports .xlsx files directly, and for a simple workbook that is genuinely all you need. The trouble starts with the workbooks that aren't simple. Sheets doesn't refuse the parts it can't handle — it drops them, quietly, and hands you a spreadsheet that looks close enough to right that nobody checks. The formula that became a #NAME? error is three tabs over. The conditional formatting that made the overdue rows red is simply not there any more.

This tool reads the workbook the way Sheets is about to and tells you, cell by cell, what will be different. Then it repairs what can be repaired before the import rather than after.

What Google Sheets loses from an Excel file

The list is longer than most people expect, and it falls into three groups.

Things that arrive broken

• Structured table references. Table1[Amount] and [@Price] are how Excel writes a formula over a named table. Sheets has no equivalent syntax and every one of them errors. This tool rewrites them as ordinary ranges, which mean exactly the same thing in both.
• Functions Sheets doesn't have. TEXTSPLIT, VSTACK, CHOOSECOLS, SORTBY, AGGREGATE, GETPIVOTDATA and the whole cube family have no counterpart. Every cell downstream of one goes with it.
• Functions stored under an internal name. Excel saves anything newer than the file format with an _xlfn. prefix and hides it again when it shows you the formula. Sheets has XLOOKUP and IFS, but not under those names, so they error too. This tool takes the prefix off.
• Links to other workbooks. Sheets has no cross-file references. IMPORTRANGE is the nearest thing and an import doesn't produce one.
• Macros. VBA doesn't run in Sheets, and any custom function a macro defined becomes an error in every cell that called it.
• Data bars and icon sets. Sheets has single-colour rules and colour scales, and nothing else.

Things that arrive different

• Fonts. Calibri — Excel's default since 2007 — isn't one of the faces Sheets ships with, so it is substituted, usually with Arial. Different width means every column somebody sized by hand comes out wrong.
• Patterned fills flatten to solid colours. Diagonal borders disappear.
• Pivot tables are rebuilt rather than carried over: layout, custom subtotals and grouping commonly don't survive, and calculated fields never do.
• Charts are re-drawn as Sheets charts. Most types survive; 3-D and surface charts don't, and colours and fonts are re-derived.
• Number formats carrying a locale code lose it, and the accounting formats that pad with repeated characters lose the padding.
• Sparklines, slicers and form controls are dropped outright.

Things that stop the import entirely

Google Sheets holds ten million cells and 18,278 columns. Past either, the conversion doesn't truncate — it fails, and the workbook has to be split first. The report tells you before you find out the hard way.

How it works

1. Upload a .xlsx or .xlsm file.
2. Read the report. Findings are grouped by what they cost you, and each one names the sheet and cell so you can go and look.
3. Download the repaired workbook with the fixable breakages already fixed.
4. Import it into Google Sheets — File › Import › Upload, and choose Replace spreadsheet or Create new spreadsheet.

Nothing else in the file is rewritten

Tools that rebuild a spreadsheet to change one thing tend to lose everything they don't understand. This one edits the formula text inside the file and copies every other part through byte for byte — charts, images, pivot caches, styles, drawings, the macro project. A workbook with nothing to repair comes back identical to the one that went in, which is the strongest guarantee the tool can give that the repair itself cost you nothing.

The repaired file is aimed at the import rather than back at Excel: taking the _xlfn. prefix off a function is what makes it work in Sheets and what stops Excel recognising it. Keep your original — this is a file to import, not a replacement for the one you have.

Frequently asked

Can't I just upload the .xlsx to Google Drive?

You can, and you should — that's the last step here. The question this answers is what that upload will cost you, before it costs you it.

Does this need access to my Google account?

No. Nothing here connects to Drive or Sheets. You get a file back and import it yourself, which means there is no account to authorise and no permission to grant.

What happens to my file?

It's read on the server to produce the report and the repaired copy, and both are deleted within the hour. Nobody opens it.

Does it work the other way round?

Not yet. Google Sheets exports to .xlsx from File › Download, and that direction loses much less, because Excel implements nearly everything Sheets does.