Convert XLS to Microsoft SQL Server
Upload a .xlsx or .xls file and get back a Microsoft SQL Server SQL script you can load straight into your database. Types are preserved rather than flattened to text. Free, no registration, up to 10MB.
Click to upload or drag and drop
CSV, Excel, SQLite, SQL, DBF (max 10 MB)
How your data is typed in Microsoft SQL Server
Generated from the converter's own Microsoft SQL Server type mapping — this is what it actually emits, not an example.
| Your data | Microsoft SQL Server type |
|---|---|
| Whole number | BIGINT |
| Decimal (money) | DECIMAL(10,2) |
| Floating point | FLOAT |
| True / false | BIT |
| Date | DATE |
| Date and time | DATETIME2 |
| Short text | NVARCHAR(255) |
| Long text | NVARCHAR(MAX) |
| Binary data | VARBINARY(MAX) |
Working from a .xls file
A .xls file is BIFF8, the binary format Excel used through 2003. Its hard ceiling is 65,536 rows and 256 columns per sheet, which is the single most common reason a spreadsheet has to become a database: the data outgrew the file format, not the machine.
- →The .xls path reads through pandas and xlrd, which does not expose cell number formats - so a column formatted as currency arrives as a floating-point number rather than a fixed-point decimal.
- →The preview screen is where to correct that: retype the column to decimal before converting, or re-save the workbook as .xlsx, which does carry its formats through.
- →If your file is near the 65,536-row limit, check whether it was already truncated when it was saved - the conversion moves what is in the file, and cannot recover rows Excel dropped.
Which SQL Server this runs on
Microsoft SQL Server is the full product name, and it covers a wide range of places to put a database: Express on a laptop, a Developer instance, a Linux container, a managed Azure SQL database. The script was written not to care which of them it lands in.
- →There is no CREATE DATABASE, no USE, and no filegroup or collation clause anywhere in the file, so nothing in it can be refused by an edition that forbids those. Which database it populates is decided by your client's connection.
- →No schema is named either, so the tables land in the default schema of whichever login runs the script - dbo for most logins. Moving them elsewhere afterwards is an ALTER SCHEMA ... TRANSFER.
- →The primary key is emitted as an unnamed constraint, which the server materialises as a clustered index under a name it invents. Nothing else is indexed, so any index the source carried has to be rebuilt by hand.
Reading XLS
- →Numbers, dates and booleans are read as Excel stored them, never converted to text and re-parsed.
- →Cell number formats are read out of .xlsx workbooks, so a column formatted as currency becomes a fixed-point decimal rather than a floating-point number — which is how money avoids acquiring a rounding tail. Legacy .xls is the exception: the xlrd path exposes no formats, so its currency columns come across as ordinary numbers.
- →A column formatted as a date becomes a date, not a timestamp at midnight; one formatted with a time keeps its time.
- →One sheet becomes one table. Empty sheets are skipped, and sheet names are sanitised for the target.
Writing Microsoft SQL Server
- →String literals carry the N prefix, so non-ASCII text survives whatever collation the database uses.
- →Timestamps become DATETIME2. T-SQL’s TIMESTAMP is a row-version counter, not a point in time.
- →Identity columns are wrapped in SET IDENTITY_INSERT so explicit key values load.
- →Statements are separated with GO in batches.
What you get
A ZIP containing dump.sql, plus a README with the exact command to load it. If anything about your data needed a judgement call, a _warnings.txt explains it.
Load this dump into SQL Server:
sqlcmd -S HOST -U USER -P PASSWORD -d DATABASE -i dump.sql
Notes:
- Text columns are NVARCHAR and literals carry the N prefix, so
non-ASCII data survives regardless of database collation.
- Timestamps are DATETIME2. T-SQL's TIMESTAMP type is a row
version, not a point in time.Questions
- Is converting XLS to Microsoft SQL Server free?
- Yes. Files up to 10MB convert free with no account. There is a limit of five conversions per day per IP address.
- Will my XLS data keep its types in Microsoft SQL Server?
- Yes — that is the point. Whole numbers, decimals, dates and booleans are mapped to real Microsoft SQL Server types rather than everything becoming text. The mapping table above shows exactly what you get.
- Do you store my file?
- No. The file is written to a temporary directory, converted, and the directory is deleted as soon as your download has been sent.