Convert XLSX to SQL Server

Upload a .xlsx or .xls file and get back a 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 SQL Server

Generated from the converter's own SQL Server type mapping — this is what it actually emits, not an example.

Your dataSQL Server type
Whole numberBIGINT
Decimal (money)DECIMAL(10,2)
Floating pointFLOAT
True / falseBIT
DateDATE
Date and timeDATETIME2
Short textNVARCHAR(255)
Long textNVARCHAR(MAX)
Binary dataVARBINARY(MAX)

Working from a .xlsx file

A .xlsx file is OOXML - a zip of XML parts - and holds up to 1,048,576 rows per sheet. It also states its number formats explicitly, which is why more type information survives the trip out of .xlsx than out of any other spreadsheet format.

  • The workbook is opened for cached values only, so a formula cell converts as the number Excel last calculated for it. A file written by a script that never opened it in Excel can have those cells empty.
  • A column's number format is taken from the first data row that states one, so formatting only the header row tells the reader nothing about the column.
  • Accounting formats count as money even with no symbol in them: #,##0.00 is read as fixed-point, not as a plain number.

How names and bytes are written

mssql is the short name the drivers use - the ODBC DSN, SQLAlchemy's mssql+pyodbc, the container image. What it produces is ordinary T-SQL text, and the details worth checking before you run it are how it writes names and how it writes raw bytes.

  • Identifiers are wrapped in square brackets rather than double quotes, and a bracket inside a source name is turned into an underscore before the wrapping goes on: a column named Order]Date is created as [Order_Date], so a bracket in your data can never close a name early.
  • The identifier cap is 128 characters, high enough that almost every source name survives untouched - one that Oracle would have to cut at 30 arrives here whole.
  • Binary columns are VARBINARY(MAX) and their values are written as bare 0x hex literals, with no quotes around them and no conversion function wrapped over them.

Reading XLSX

  • 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 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 XLSX to 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 XLSX data keep its types in SQL Server?
Yes — that is the point. Whole numbers, decimals, dates and booleans are mapped to real 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.

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