xlsx

Microsoft Excel (XLSX)

Microsoft Excel (XLSX) is among the world's most popular spreadsheet programs. It uses a data format called "XLSX" which in turn uses XML and binary compression.

• Has spreadsheet sheets. Each sheet is called a "Worksheet", and can contain columns and rows.

• Has spreadsheet folios. Each folio is called a "Workbook", and can contain one or more sheets.

• Does not have a greater hierarchy, such as a collection of folios.

• Can import/export data in many formats, such as CSV and TSV, but not yet USV.

Custom delimiters

Microsoft Excel enables the user to import/export using a wide range of custom delimiters, such as column separators and row separators.

In our experience

In our experience, the XLSX is great for primarily reading and editing by using Microsoft Excel or a compatible spreadsheet program. We had some success using decompression software then a XML editor, but this process and the XML tooling is harder for end users to do.

Workbooks and Worksheets

We work with spreadsheets that are folios a.k.a. workbooks, that each contain multiple sheets a.k.a. worksheets.

my-workbook-1.xlsx
my-workbook-2.xlsx
my-workbook-3.xlsx

Or if we export data to CSV or similar format then we have even more files:

my-workbook-1-worksheet-1.csv
my-workbook-1-worksheet-2.csv
my-workbook-1-worksheet-3.csv
my-workbook-2-worksheet-1.csv
my-workbook-2-worksheet-2.csv
my-workbook-2-worksheet-3.csv
my-workbook-3-worksheet-1.csv
my-workbook-3-worksheet-2.csv
my-workbook-3-worksheet-3.csv

To send all the data to another team, we have tried a variety of combiner tools, such as tar and zip.

For comparison, USV can contain all the data, because a USV file is equivalent to a spreadsheet folio, and USV group is equivalent to a spreadsheet sheet.

Thus our export uses one filesystem file:

my.usv