Convert legacy Excel spreadsheets (XLS) online for free
The converter easily converts your XLS spreadsheets to various formats - free and online. No Microsoft Excel or or other Spreadsheet software needed.
The converter also works in reverse, so you can convert other "Legacy Binary Spreadsheet" formats to XLS without using software like Microsoft Excel or a similar tool.
The .XLS file is the legacy binary spreadsheet format created by Microsoft for Excel 97-2003. Internally known as the Binary Interchange File Format (BIFF), it stores tabular data, formulas, charts, and macros. You can open it using Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice Calc, or Google Sheets. Surprisingly, many modern .XLS files are not binary at all - they are raw HTML tables, XML data, or web page exports forcibly saved with an .XLS extension by legacy systems (like the India Post vacancy database) to bypass download limits.
Using .XLS today causes severe workflow bottlenecks. The format enforces a strict hard limit of 65,536 rows and 256 columns, causing data loss for large datasets. It is a proprietary binary format, meaning it is prone to corruption and difficult for developer tools to parse. Security is another major risk, as legacy .XLS files frequently carry malicious VBA macro viruses. Furthermore, if you attempt to open an HTML-renamed .XLS file in modern Excel, you will be blocked by frustrating "file format and extension don't match" security warnings.
To bypass these limitations, you should convert the file. For active editing and extending row limits to 1 million+, convert to XLSX (the modern Open XML standard). For database imports or python scripting, extract the raw data to CSV. For immutable sharing, convert to PDF. Just drag and drop your file here to analyze and convert it - free, online, and without installing software.
Use Convert.Guru to open and convert your XLS file.
Users also converted MACROS, XLA, XL, WORKBOOK, XLSX, CSV, MACRO, XSL, XLW, RPT, ECR, SECURE and CLS files.
If you want to convert XLS file to JPG, JSON, XLSM or XLSB, you can use Microsoft Excel or similar software from the "Spreadsheet Data Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert NOTES or QPW files to XLS, try Microsoft Excel or another comparable tool in the "Spreadsheet Data Storage" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our XLS converter.