Excel to CSV Conversion

29 Nov 20247 minutes to read

XlsIO supports converting Excel file to CSV file by saving the workbook using the SaveAs method. When saving as CSV, users can specify various delimiters to structure the data appropriately. By default, Syncfusion® XlsIO uses a comma (,) as the delimiter.

Delimiters Used in CSV files

• Comma (,)
• Tab (\t)
• Semicolon (;)
• Colon (:)
• Space ( )
• Equals Sign (=)

The following code example illustrates how to convert an Excel file to CSV.

C# [Cross-platform]

using (ExcelEngine excelEngine = new ExcelEngine())
{
	IApplication application = excelEngine.Excel;
	application.DefaultVersion = ExcelVersion.Xlsx;
	FileStream inputStream = new FileStream(Path.GetFullPath(@"Data/InputTemplate.xlsx"), FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
	IWorkbook workbook = application.Workbooks.Open(inputStream);

	//Saving the workbook as streams
	FileStream outputStream = new FileStream(Path.GetFullPath("Output/Sample.csv"), FileMode.Create, FileAccess.ReadWrite);
	workbook.SaveAs(outputStream, ",");

	//Dispose streams
	outputStream.Dispose();
	inputStream.Dispose();
}

C# [Windows-specific]

using (ExcelEngine excelEngine = new ExcelEngine())
{
  IApplication application = excelEngine.Excel;
  application.DefaultVersion = ExcelVersion.Xlsx;
  IWorkbook workbook = application.Workbooks.Open("InputTemplate.xlsx");

  //Saving the workbook
  workbook.SaveAs("Output.csv", ",");
}

VB.NET [Windows-specific]

Using excelEngine As New ExcelEngine()
  Dim application As IApplication = excelEngine.Excel
  application.DefaultVersion = ExcelVersion.Xlsx
  Dim workbook As IWorkbook = application.Workbooks.Open("InputTemplate.xlsx")

  ' Saving the workbook
  worksheet.SaveAs("Output.csv", ",")
End Using

A complete working example to convert an Excel file to CSV in C# is present on this GitHub page.

Maximum Rows and Columns for CSV

By default, XlsIO allows only 1048576 rows and 16256 columns while loading or saving a CSV document. This limit can be increased by modifying the MaximumRowsForCsv and MaximumColumnsForCsv properties.

The following code example illustrates how to set the maximum rows and columns for saving as CSV files.

C# [Cross-platform]

using (ExcelEngine excelEngine = new ExcelEngine())
{
  IApplication application = excelEngine.Excel;
  application.DefaultVersion = ExcelVersion.Xlsx;
  
  application.MaximumRowsForCsv = 3000000;
  application.MaximumColumnsForCsv = 20000;
  
  FileStream inputStream = new FileStream("Sample.csv", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
  IWorkbook workbook = application.Workbooks.Open(inputStream);
  IWorksheet sheet = workbook.Worksheets[0];
  
  sheet.Range[2000000, 1].Text = "Syncfusion";
  sheet.Range[20, 18000].Text = "Syncfusion";
  
  //Saving the workbook as stream
  FileStream outputStream = new FileStream("Output.csv", FileMode.Create, FileAccess.ReadWrite);
  workbook.SaveAs(outputStream,",");
}

C# [Windows-specific]

using (ExcelEngine excelEngine = new ExcelEngine())
{
  IApplication application = excelEngine.Excel;
  application.DefaultVersion = ExcelVersion.Xlsx;
  
  application.MaximumRowsForCsv = 3000000;
  application.MaximumColumnsForCsv = 20000;
  
  IWorkbook workbook = application.Workbooks.Open("Sample.csv");
  IWorksheet sheet = workbook.Worksheets[0];
  
  sheet.Range[2000000, 1].Text = "Syncfusion";
  sheet.Range[20, 18000].Text = "Syncfusion";
  
  //Saving the workbook
  workbook.SaveAs("Output.csv", ",");
}

VB.NET [Windows-specific]

Using excelEngine As ExcelEngine = New ExcelEngine()
  Dim application As IApplication = excelEngine.Excel
  application.DefaultVersion = ExcelVersion.Xlsx
  
  application.MaximumRowsForCsv = 3000000
  application.MaximumColumnsForCsv = 20000
  
  Dim workbook As IWorkbook = application.Workbooks.Open("Sample.csv")
  Dim sheet As IWorksheet = workbook.Worksheets(0)
  
  sheet.Range(2000000, 1).Text = "Syncfusion"
  sheet.Range(20, 18000).Text = "Syncfusion"
  
  //Saving the workbook
  workbook.SaveAs("Output.csv", ",")
End Using

Excel to TSV Conversion

TSV (Tab-Separated Values) files can be created by saving a workbook with the tab separator (\t).

The following code example illustrates how to convert an Excel file to TSV.

C# [Cross-platform]

using (ExcelEngine excelEngine = new ExcelEngine())
{
	IApplication application = excelEngine.Excel;
	application.DefaultVersion = ExcelVersion.Xlsx;

	FileStream inputStream = new FileStream(Path.GetFullPath(@"Data/InputTemplate.xlsx"), FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
	IWorkbook workbook = application.Workbooks.Open(inputStream);

	//Save the workbook in CSV format with tab(\t) as delimiter
	FileStream outputStream = new FileStream(Path.GetFullPath("Output/Output.tsv"), FileMode.Create, FileAccess.ReadWrite);
	workbook.SaveAs(outputStream, "\t");
}

C# [Windows-specific]

using (ExcelEngine excelEngine = new ExcelEngine())
{
  IApplication application = excelEngine.Excel;
  application.DefaultVersion = ExcelVersion.Xlsx;
  IWorkbook workbook = application.Workbooks.Open("InputTemplate.xlsx");

  //Saving the workbook in CSV format with tab(\t) as delimiter
  workbook.SaveAs("Output.tsv", "\t");
}

VB.NET [Windows-specific]

Using excelEngine As New ExcelEngine()
  Dim application As IApplication = excelEngine.Excel
  application.DefaultVersion = ExcelVersion.Xlsx
  Dim workbook As IWorkbook = application.Workbooks.Open("InputTemplate.xlsx")

  ' Saving the workbook in CSV format with tab(\t) as delimiter
  workbook.SaveAs("Output.tsv", vbTab)
End Using

A complete working example to convert an Excel file to TSV in C# is present on this GitHub page.