Linux: Convert xlsx to csv in Linux with command line

The Gnumeric spreadsheet application comes with a command line utility called ssconvert that can convert between a variety of spreadsheet formats:

$ ssconvert Book1.xlsx newfile.csv
Using exporter Gnumeric_stf:stf_csv
$ cat newfile.csv
Foo,Bar,Baz
1,2,3
123.6,7.89,
2012/05/14,,
The,last,Line

To install on Ubuntu:

apt-get install gnumeric

To install on Mac:

brew install gnumeric

Try libre office

libreoffice --headless --convert-to csv $filename --outdir $outdir

For reasons not clear to me, you might need to run this with sudo. You can make LibreOffice work with sudo without requiring a password by adding this line to you sudoers file:

users ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: libreoffice

Use csvkit

in2csv data.xlsx > data.csv

5 Methods to Convert xlsx Format Files to CSV on Linux CLI. XLSX is a file extension for an open XML spreadsheet file format used by MicrosoftExcel.Converting Microsoft Excel sheet to a Comma Separated file (CSV) is relatively very easy while using command line.

For reasons not clear to me, you might need to run this with sudo. You can make LibreOffice work with sudo without requiring a password by adding this line to you sudoers file:

Another option would be to use R via a small bash wrapper for convenience:

xlsx2txt(){
echo '
require(xlsx)
write.table(read.xlsx2(commandArgs(TRUE)[1], 1), stdout(), quote=F, row.names=FALSE, col.names=T, sep="\t")
' | Rscript --vanilla - $1 2>/dev/null
}

xlsx2txt file.xlsx > file.txt

The Gnumeric spreadsheet application comes with a command line utility called ssconvert that can convert between a variety of spreadsheet formats:

$ ssconvert Book1.xlsx newfile.csv
Using exporter Gnumeric_stf:stf_csv

$ cat newfile.csv 
Foo,Bar,Baz
1,2,3
123.6,7.89,
2012/05/14,,
The,last,Line

To install on Ubuntu:

apt-get install gnumeric

To install on Mac:

brew install gnumeric