Excel to Markdown Converter

What gets converted

The converter reads the workbook with SheetJS and writes one GitHub-flavored Markdown table per sheet. Markdown tables are plain grids of text, so anything beyond values doesn't survive. Here is exactly what happens, checked against the converter code and a test workbook.

Common problems and fixes

The header row is a title, not my column names

Each table uses the first row of its sheet as the header. If the sheet starts with a report title or a blank-looking merged banner, that row becomes the header and your real column names end up as the first data row. Delete the title rows in a copy of the workbook before converting, or fix the first lines of the Markdown by hand.

Private data showed up in the output

Hidden sheets, hidden rows and hidden columns are converted along with everything else. Read the output before you publish it, or unhide and delete what you don't want in a copy of the file first.

The table is far too wide

A sheet with dozens of columns makes a table that scrolls sideways on GitHub and is hard to read anywhere. Copy only the columns you need into a new sheet, or paste that range into the Markdown table generator, which lets you remove columns and set alignment.

Formulas show old or empty values

The converter reads the results Excel saved in the file. Workbooks written by some scripts and tools contain formulas without saved results. Open the file in Excel, LibreOffice or Google Sheets, let it recalculate, save, and convert again.

My file isn't accepted

The converter takes .xlsx, .xls and .ods files. Macro-enabled .xlsm files and Apple Numbers files need to be saved or exported as .xlsx first. A .csv file works too, as a single table, or use the CSV to Markdown converter.

Other ways to convert Excel to Markdown

• Copy and paste cells. For a single range, select the cells in Excel or Google Sheets, copy, and paste them into the Markdown table generator. It reads the tab-separated clipboard and builds the table.
• Pandoc. Since version 3.8.3 (December 2025), Pandoc reads .xlsx directly and turns each worksheet into a section with a table: pandoc -f xlsx -t gfm book.xlsx -o book.md.
• MarkItDown. Microsoft's Python library converts .xlsx and .xls files to Markdown tables. The MarkItDown Online page compares it with this tool.
• Python. pandas can write any DataFrame as Markdown with df.to_markdown(), which needs the tabulate package. The Excel to Markdown guide walks through it.

Excel itself has no Save as Markdown option. This page is the quickest route when you want every sheet converted at once, without installing anything and without the workbook leaving your computer.