Introduction

XLS is the legacy binary spreadsheet format used by Microsoft Excel 97–2003. While superseded by XLSX, XLS files remain common in older datasets and archives. Stencila can import XLS files, converting spreadsheet data into Datatable nodes.

Usage

Use the .xls file extension, or the --from xls option, when importing from XLS e.g.

stencila convert workbook.xls table.smd

Info

XLS is currently supported for import (decoding) only.

Implementation

XLS decoding is implemented in the Rust crate codec-xlsx using the calamine library.

Limitations

Export (encoding) to XLS is not supported. Consider exporting to CSV for tabular data output.

Only the first worksheet in the workbook is read; additional sheets are ignored.

Cell formatting, formulas, charts, and macros are not preserved — only cell values are extracted.

The XLS binary format has known limitations with very large files and complex formatting.