Do you have years’ worth of Excel XLS files that you would like to convert to XLSX or CSV? Or, conversely, do you have XLSX files sent to you that you would rather convert to XLS? If you’ve ever needed to convert Excel files (from or to XLS, XLSX, CSV, PDF and XPS formats) then you’re in luck. Simple Excel Document Converter can do this for you, in batch, at the press of a button.
The program automates the process of converting these file formats even as it uses Excel’s conversion functionality to do so (it requires Excel 2007 or higher to be installed on your machine in order to function). All you have to do is add a list of files, select the format you want to convert to, and start the conversion process.
This is a very simple, no-frills program designed to get the job done quickly and easily. It consists of a simple executable that does not require installation, but does require that Excel be installed on the machine from which it is run. The advantage of using ‘Simple MS Excel Document Converter’, rather than Excel itself, is simple: to batch convert many files in one fell swoop, rather than manually or one-by-one.
Be careful when you convert: there are a number of considerations to be aware of
- XLSX vs XLS differences: be mindful that you may lose some of the XLSX functionality when converting to XLS. Any data that may exist in sheets beyond the maximum 65536 rows supported by XLS will be lost when converting from XLSX (where the maximum number of rows is 1,048,576).
- Macros are not supported: you cannot convert to XLSM (i.e. XLSX files that contain macros), and you cannot convert from XLSM. Which is quite a disappointment.
- PDF support: is available only if your installed version of Excel is 2010 or later, wherein you can convert TO PDF; you cannot go the other way and convert FROM PDF to other formats.
- Pivot tables: are supported and convert just fine.
- Converting to CSV: the program will only convert the sheet that ways last open when the XLS or XLSX file was saved, unfortunately. It will also stop at the end of the data rows, whether or not there are other elements underneath.
The verdict:
This program can be very convenient if you have a large number of XLSX, XLS, CSV or any other of the supported file formats that you would like to convert in batch, without doing it manually one-by-one, and without going into Excel necessarily.
However, ‘Simple MS Excel Document Converter’ can be a much better program, and we hope that the program continues to be developed and improved. Support for Excel files containing macros would be a great improvement, as would the option to scroll through and save every sheet in an Excel workbook to CSV automatically.
Download the program here (Windows).
