Excel to ODS
Convert Excel to OpenDocument .ods.
Click to upload or drag & drop
Select a spreadsheet (.xlsx or .xls)
How to use the Excel to ODS
- 1Hand over the Excel file
Pick an .xlsx or .xls from your computer, or drag it straight into the uploader.
- 2Run Convert to ODS
Every sheet, style and formula is re-expressed in OpenDocument terms by LibreOffice.
- 3Open it in Calc
The .ods arrives in your downloads folder, ready for LibreOffice or OpenOffice.
Examples
| Input | Output |
|---|---|
Ordinary values, dates, formats | Carried across intact |
Spilled dynamic array | Does not spill in Calc |
LAMBDA / LET formula | No Calc equivalent |
Pivot table + slicer | Table kept; slicer is not |
Calibri / Aptos throughout | Substituted if not installed |
.xlsm macro workbook | Not an accepted input |
Why anyone needs an .ods
OpenDocument is the house format of LibreOffice Calc and Apache OpenOffice, and in some settings it is not merely preferred but required: the UK government has specified ODF for the editable documents it shares since 2014, and a number of European public bodies and universities follow similar procurement rules. The everyday reasons are less formal — a collaborator on Linux with no Office licence, an archive policy that favours a vendor-neutral schema, or a Calc user who would simply rather not fight with compatibility warnings every time they save.
The journey is not symmetrical
Excel to Calc is the harder direction of travel. Microsoft’s format has picked up capabilities that OpenDocument has no vocabulary for, so LibreOffice parses your workbook and then re-states each part in ODF terms, approximating or discarding whatever it cannot phrase. Data and presentation are safe. Sophistication is what you pay for.
Functions Calc has not caught up with
Excel’s function library has grown quickly in recent years and Calc has not tracked all of it. Dynamic arrays — a single formula whose results spill into the cells beside it — are absent from current Calc builds, as are LAMBDA and LET, which let you define your own reusable function inside a cell. Those cells will not evaluate in the .ods and report an error name where a result should be. The arithmetic, text, date, lookup and statistical functions that the overwhelming majority of workbooks are actually made of convert without any drama at all.
Macros are a dead end in this direction
This is the single most important thing to understand before converting. VBA is Microsoft’s macro language; an OpenDocument spreadsheet stores LibreOffice Basic instead. They are different languages addressing different object models, and no converter translates between them automatically — not this one, not Excel’s own save dialog. A workbook whose buttons, forms and automation are the reason it exists should stay where it is and be run in Excel.
Give the converted file a once-over
Five minutes of checking saves an embarrassing email later. Look at any chart, since its series will be intact but its typography and axis labels may have moved. Test one entry in each data validation drop-down. Confirm that conditional formatting still highlights the rows you expect, particularly rules driven by a formula rather than a simple threshold. Finally, check anything that pointed outside the file — links to other workbooks and refreshable queries do not survive the trip and will need re-establishing in Calc.
Treat the .ods as a copy, not a replacement
Keep your .xlsx. Every conversion is a re-interpretation, and converting the returned .ods back with ODS to Excel is a second re-interpretation stacked on the first, which is how charts quietly degrade over a few exchanges. When the other person only has to read the sheet and never edit it, skip the format question altogether and send them Excel to PDF output instead; when they only need the numbers, Excel to CSV is smaller and simpler than either spreadsheet format.
Where the conversion actually happens
There is no ODF writer built into any web browser, and reimplementing one in JavaScript alongside a complete OOXML reader is not a realistic proposition — so this tool hands the job to a real headless LibreOffice installation running on our hardware. Practically, that means your workbook is uploaded over HTTPS, given a scratch directory and a private LibreOffice profile of its own so that no two conversions can see each other, and that entire directory is deleted the moment your .ods has been sent back down.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I put a macro-enabled .xlsm through this?
The uploader takes .xlsx and .xls, so an .xlsm is not a valid input here — and that restriction is doing you a favour. VBA code has no representation in an OpenDocument spreadsheet, so even if the file were accepted the automation would vanish and you would be left with a shell that looks right and does nothing. Keep macro workbooks as .xlsm and run them in Excel.
Will the .ods look identical when my colleague opens it?
Close, but fonts are the usual culprit when it does not. Excel workbooks are typically built in Calibri or Aptos, which are Microsoft fonts and are often absent on a Linux or plain OpenOffice machine. Calc substitutes something similar, the substitute has different metrics, and suddenly text wraps onto a second line or a column is a few pixels too narrow. Widening the offending columns is normally the whole fix.
What happens to a pivot table and its slicers?
Calc has its own pivot table implementation, so the table itself generally arrives with its rows, columns and totals in place. The controls people attach to pivots fare worse: slicers and timelines have no OpenDocument counterpart, and calculated fields are inconsistent. Rebuild the interactive parts in Calc rather than assuming they made the journey.
My file is an old .xls. Should I modernise it first?
You can convert it straight to .ods here, since .xls is accepted. But if the original also needs to stay in the Microsoft world, it is usually tidier to run it through XLS to XLSX first and keep that as your master copy, because the ancient binary format constrains what any conversion can carry.
Does it cost anything, and is there a ceiling on file size?
It is free to use as often as you like, with no account and nothing stamped onto the spreadsheet you get back. One workbook goes through at a time, and the ceiling for a single upload is 100 MB.