Why not just download a CSV?

Because CSV is a text format with no types, so Excel has to guess — and its guesses are the source of the classic complaints: leading zeros disappearing, part numbers and version strings turning into dates, and non-English characters breaking when the encoding is read wrong. An `.xlsx` carries the cell types and the encoding inside the file, so there is nothing to guess. If you specifically want CSV, the CSV to Markdown page converts in both directions.

Are numbers stored as numbers?

No — every cell is written as text, deliberately. A Markdown table carries no type information, so deciding that `00123` is the number 123 would be a guess that destroys data. If you want a column treated as numbers or dates, select it in Excel after opening and set the format there, where you can see what you are changing.

What if my document has several tables?

The first table in the text is the one converted. To export a different one, paste just that table. Multi-sheet workbooks — one sheet per table — are not supported yet.

Does it work with Google Sheets and Numbers?

Yes. `.xlsx` is the interchange format all three read: in Google Sheets use File → Import and drop the file in, and Numbers opens it directly. The bold header row and column widths survive into all of them.

Is my table uploaded to build the file?

No. The workbook is assembled in your browser and handed straight to your downloads folder — nothing is sent to a server, which matters given that the tables people convert tend to be revenue, headcount, or customer data.

Markdown to Excel converter

Paste a Markdown table and download a real .xlsx file — opens straight in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets with no import dialog.

Builds a real .xlsx in your browser — no import wizard, no mangled cells.

The obvious way to get a Markdown table into Excel is to save it as CSV, and it is the way that goes wrong. Excel greets a .csv with an import wizard, guesses the encoding — mangling any accented character unless the byte order mark happens to be right — and then helpfully reformats your data: order code 1-5 becomes the 5th of January, and the leading zeros on 00123 vanish. This tool writes an actual .xlsx workbook instead. It opens as a spreadsheet on the first double-click, with the header row already bold and the columns already sized, and every cell is written as text on purpose so nothing gets silently reinterpreted. The whole file is built in your browser.

How Markdown to Excel works

1. Paste your Markdown table, or a whole document containing one — only the table is used.
2. The right pane shows the rows and columns that will go into the sheet, so you can check them before downloading.
3. Click `.xlsx` to download the workbook, then open it in Excel, Numbers, or Google Sheets.

A real example

An engineer keeps a small inventory table in a README: part number, supplier, quantity, reorder date. Finance asks for it as a spreadsheet. Saving it as CSV and opening that in Excel produces two immediate problems: the part numbers, which look like 00841 and 12-40, come out as 841 and 12 Apr, and the one supplier name with an umlaut arrives as mojibake. Both are the kind of error nobody notices until an order goes to the wrong part. Pasting the table here and downloading the .xlsx sidesteps all of it — every cell is stored as text, so 00841 stays 00841 and 12-40 stays 12-40, the encoding is UTF-8 inside the file format itself, and the header row is already bold. Finance opens it and starts working instead of asking what happened to the part numbers.

Questions about Markdown to Excel

Keep your links forever

Free links last 7 days with a free account. On a paid plan every page you create stays online permanently.

See pricing

Related use cases

A real example