Convert XLS to SQLite
Upload a .xlsx or .xls file and get back a SQLite file. 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 SQLite
Generated from the converter's own SQLite type mapping — this is what it actually emits, not an example.
| Your data | SQLite type |
|---|---|
| Whole number | BIGINT |
| Decimal (money) | NUMERIC(10,2) |
| Floating point | REAL |
| True / false | BOOLEAN |
| Date | DATE |
| Date and time | TIMESTAMP |
| Short text | TEXT |
| Long text | TEXT |
| Binary data | BLOB |
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.
What the .sqlite file looks like inside
The output here is a real database rather than a script, so the interesting question is not how to load it but what SQLite did with the types on the way in. Its storage classes are looser than the declarations the file ends up carrying.
- →Names are carried over exactly as they were, with none of the sanitising the script targets apply: a table called Sales Report keeps its space and a column called Order ID keeps its own, so your queries have to quote them.
- →Underneath the declared types sit only five storage classes, and NUMERIC affinity - what a decimal column gets - is the loosest of them: it normalises inserted text to whatever a plain INTEGER or REAL column would hold. The precision and scale in the schema are for a human reading it, not a guarantee SQLite enforces on the bytes; the Writing notes below cover what that means for money specifically.
- →Declared type and stored type are different things here: a BOOLEAN column holds the integers 1 and 0, and a DATE column holds ISO text, because those are the storage classes SQLite actually has. Every client reads them back the same way.
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 SQLite
- →Columns get real declared types rather than everything being TEXT.
- →Primary keys and NOT NULL constraints are preserved.
- →A money column is declared NUMERIC(10,2), but that declaration does not stop SQLite’s own numeric affinity from converting the inserted value into a float once it lands, so 19.99 can come back with a rounding tail. Pick the DuckDB target instead when the exact decimal has to survive.
What you get
A ZIP containing database.sqlite. If anything about your data needed a judgement call, a _warnings.txt explains it.
Questions
- Is converting XLS to SQLite 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 SQLite?
- Yes — that is the point. Whole numbers, decimals, dates and booleans are mapped to real SQLite 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.