excel-cli

Read Excel files (xlsx, xls, ods) and output as CSV in the terminal. Pipe-friendly and composable with standard Unix tools.

Install

npm install -g excel-cli

Requires Node.js 18+.

Usage

# Output as CSV (default)
excel-cli report.xlsx

# Select specific sheet
excel-cli report.xlsx -s "Q1 Sales"
excel-cli report.xlsx -s 1              # by 0-based index

# Output all sheets
excel-cli report.xlsx -S

# Select columns (by name, letter, index, or range)
excel-cli report.xlsx -c "name,revenue"
excel-cli report.xlsx -c "A,C"
excel-cli report.xlsx -c "A-D"
excel-cli report.xlsx -c "1,3,5"

# Row filtering
excel-cli report.xlsx -r "1-100"        # rows 1-100
excel-cli report.xlsx -r "50-"          # row 50 to end
excel-cli report.xlsx -r "-20"          # last 20 rows
excel-cli report.xlsx -l 10             # limit to 10 rows
excel-cli report.xlsx -o 5 -l 10        # skip 5, then take 10

# Omit header row
excel-cli report.xlsx --no-header

# Pipe to other tools
excel-cli report.xlsx | grep "North"
excel-cli report.xlsx | wc -l
excel-cli report.xlsx > output.csv

List sheets

excel-cli sheets report.xlsx
excel-cli sheets report.xlsx --json

Inspect schema

excel-cli info report.xlsx
excel-cli info report.xlsx --json
excel-cli info report.xlsx -s "Sheet1"

Options

| Option | Description | |---|---| | -s, --sheet <name\|index> | Sheet to output (default: first) | | -S, --all-sheets | Output all sheets | | -c, --columns <list> | Columns: by name, letter, index, or range | | -r, --rows <range> | Row range (1-based): 1-50, 10-, -20, 5 | | -l, --limit <n> | Max rows to output | | -o, --offset <n> | Skip first n data rows | | --no-header | Omit header row |

Supported formats

• .xlsx (Excel 2007+)
• .xls (Excel 97-2003)
• .ods (OpenDocument)

Output

RFC 4180 compliant CSV with \r\n line endings. Fields containing commas, quotes, or newlines are properly escaped.

License

MIT