Excel to JSON Converter — XLSX, ODS & CSV to JSON Rows

Convert Excel (.xlsx/.xlsm), OpenDocument (.ods) and CSV/TSV files from URLs to clean JSON: every sheet as typed rows keyed by column name, real ISO dates instead of Excel serial numbers, formula results, plus a Markdown table per sheet. $3 per 1,000 workbooks.

Convert Excel spreadsheets to JSON in bulk. Paste links to .xlsx, .xlsm, .ods, .csv or .tsv files (or a web page that links to them) and get one row per workbook with every sheet as JSON rows keyed by column name. Values are typed: numbers stay numbers, TRUE/FALSE become booleans, formulas return their saved results, and Excel's date serial numbers become real ISO dates (2026-03-31, 14:30:00) using each cell's number format. Headers are cleaned and made unique, empty rows and trailing filler columns are dropped, hidden Excel sheets are skipped unless you want them, and each sheet also comes as a Markdown table for LLMs. CSV files get delimiter detection (comma, semicolon, tab, pipe) and Windows-1252/UTF-16 decoding, and keep values as text so postcodes and IDs keep their leading zeros. Use it to load government statistics and supplier price lists into databases, feed spreadsheets to AI agents and RAG, or replace manual "Save as CSV" steps in Make, n8n and Zapier workflows. Simple pricing: $3 per 1,000 workbooks, every sheet included (the leading Excel-to-JSON actor charges $30 per 1,000), with no compute bill on top. Failed downloads, unsupported or corrupt files and duplicates are never charged.

What data does it return?

Every run outputs clean, schema-validated rows like these:

url	format	sheetCount	sheets
https://example.gov.uk/live-table-253.ods	ods	49	[{ name: "Table 253", headers: ["Year", "Total", "Affordable"], rows: [{ Year: "2025-26", Total: 221070, Affordable: 64630 }] }]
https://example.org/q3-results.xlsx	xlsx	3	[{ name: "Revenue", headers: ["Region", "Q3", "Updated"], rows: [{ Region: "EMEA", Q3: 1250000, Updated: "2026-09-30" }] }]
https://example.org/prices.csv	csv	1	[{ name: "prices", headers: ["SKU", "Price"], rows: [{ SKU: "00123", Price: "4,50" }] }]

How much does it cost?

Transparent pay-per-event pricing — you only pay for what you get, and the actor always respects your run budget: set a maximum total charge and it stops cleanly at the cap instead of overrunning.

Event	Price	Charged	Worked example
document-converted	$0.003	per workbook or file converted and delivered (all sheets and output formats included)	1,000 workbooks = $3.00; a 40-sheet workbook is still $0.003
apify-actor-start	$0.00005	per run per GB of memory (platform start fee)	One run at 1 GB = $0.00005

Input options

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
urls	array	yes	—	Links to Excel (.xlsx, .xlsm), OpenDocument (.ods), CSV or TSV files. You can also add a web page (e.g. a statistics page): every spreadsheet it links to is converted. Word, PowerPoint and EPUB files work too.
outputFormats	array	no	["markdown"]	Which text fields to return besides the JSON rows (a Markdown table per sheet is handy for LLMs). Same price whatever you pick.
spreadsheetJson	boolean	no	true	For Excel, OpenDocument and CSV files, also return every sheet as typed JSON rows keyed by column name (numbers, booleans and ISO dates, not just text).
headerRow	boolean	no	true	Use each sheet's first non-empty row as column names. Turn off to name columns A, B, C…
maxRowsPerSheet	integer	no	10000	Read at most this many data rows from each sheet. Longer sheets are marked truncated.
includeHiddenSheets	boolean	no	false	Also convert Excel sheets that are hidden in the workbook.
includeSpeakerNotes	boolean	no	true	Add each PowerPoint slide's speaker notes after its content.
chunkSize	integer	no	0	Also split each document into chunks of at most this many characters for embedding, split at headings, paragraphs and table rows, each with its heading path. 0 = no chunks. Around 1,500–4,000 suits most embedding models.
maxDocuments	integer	no	1000	Stop after converting this many documents (including ones found on web pages).
findDocumentLinks	boolean	no	true	When a URL is a web page rather than a document, convert the documents it links to (one level, robots.txt respected).

Limits & honest notes

• Supported: .docx/.docm, .pptx/.pptm, .xlsx/.xlsm, .odt, .ods, .epub, .csv, .tsv, .md and .txt. Legacy binary files (.doc, .xls, .ppt), .odp, RTF and password-protected documents are reported and not charged. PDFs have their own actor: PDF to Markdown.
• Images, charts and SmartArt are skipped (they have no text or URL to keep). Bold and italic survive in Word files; colours, fonts and layout do not.
• Excel formulas return the value saved in the file (the last calculated result); they are not recalculated. Merged cells keep their value in the first cell only.
• CSV values stay as text so postcodes, IDs and phone numbers keep their leading zeros. Excel and OpenDocument cells are typed.
• Files up to 100 MB. Spreadsheets return up to 100,000 rows per sheet (10,000 by default). Very large results move to a linked file, with a preview kept in the row.
• Web pages in the input are scanned for links to documents (one level deep, robots.txt respected). If a site's robots.txt can't be fetched (HTTP 5xx or a network error, after one retry), the documents linked on that site are skipped (RFC 9309) and the page gets a free row saying why. Pages behind a login are not supported.
• Respects your run budget: set a maximum total charge and conversion stops cleanly at the cap, with no document charged twice.

Related ActorForge actors

• Word, Excel & PowerPoint to Markdown — Word, Excel and PowerPoint in one actor
• Word to Markdown
• PDF to Text

Changelog

• 2026-10-19 — Initial release: Excel, OpenDocument and CSV to typed JSON rows and Markdown tables, ISO dates from number formats, document-link discovery on web pages.

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Built and maintained by ActorForge. Reliability first: every actor in the portfolio is monitored by an automated nightly self-test, and breakages are typically fixed the same day.