How to Create a CSV File in Excel

Save an Excel worksheet as CSV

1. Open the workbook and select the worksheet you want to export. Put a header row at the top if the receiving system expects column names.
2. Keep an editable copy in .xlsx format. Then choose File > Save As or Save a Copy, depending on your Excel version.
3. In the file-type menu, choose CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) when available. If the destination requires another encoding or separator, confirm its specification before choosing a different option.
4. Accept Excel's warning about features not supported by CSV, then open the saved file in a text editor or reimport it to check a few representative rows.

The exported CSV represents the active worksheet. If your workbook has several tabs, repeat the export for each sheet that needs its own CSV. Microsoft's workbook-to-text instructions describe the Save As options and format limitations. Menu labels and the available CSV variants can differ across Excel editions.

Use the browser converter for an existing workbook

If you have an .xlsx or .xls file but do not want to open Excel, the site's Excel to CSV converter exports every worksheet by default. One sheet downloads as a CSV; multiple sheets download as separate CSV files in a ZIP. You can still choose just one worksheet. Each CSV is UTF-8 with a byte-order mark (BOM), which helps some Excel installations recognize UTF-8 when that CSV is opened later. The conversion runs in your browser; the file is not uploaded to a server. The current file-size limit is 20 MB.

A workbook with tabs named Orders and Customers cannot become one ordinary CSV without changing its structure. The default ZIP contains one CSV for each tab. Compare the first and last populated rows of each file with its worksheet before sharing the results.

Prepare the sheet for a clean CSV

Give each column one meaning: for example, order_id, customer_name, and total. Avoid title blocks and decorative merged cells above the table, because those rows are data in a CSV. Confirm whether the receiving system wants a header row, what delimiter it accepts, and whether blank rows are meaningful.

Do not assume the formatting you see in Excel is the exact text another program will read. A displayed date, currency amount, or code may not round-trip the way you expect. Inspect the exported text, especially dates, leading-zero identifiers, decimal separators, and values containing commas or line breaks. Standard CSV writers quote fields when needed, so a comma inside a customer name should not automatically create a new column. Test the file in the actual destination system when its parser has special requirements.

Why keep the original Excel file?

CSV is a transfer format, not a replacement for the workbook. It cannot store multiple worksheets, formulas, charts, cell colors, or column widths. The exported rows contain values, so keep the .xlsx version if you need to edit formulas or reproduce the report later. Saving a workbook as CSV does not make the original workbook more portable; it creates a separate, simpler representation of one sheet.

When someone sends the CSV back and you need it in a workbook, import it with deliberate column types or use our CSV to Excel tool. Opening CSV directly in Excel can reinterpret identifiers and dates; the CSV import guide explains how to avoid that. Microsoft also documents CSV import and export for this round trip.