View spreadsheets without Excel
Someone sends you a spreadsheet, and you are on a Chromebook, a borrowed computer or a phone without Office. This Excel viewer opens the file directly in your browser and displays every sheet as a table, with the familiar column letters and row numbers. It is built on SheetJS, a widely used spreadsheet parsing library, and runs entirely on your device.
Supported file formats
| Format | Extensions |
|---|---|
| Excel 2007 and later | .xlsx, .xlsm (macro-enabled), .xlsb (binary) |
| Excel 97–2003 | .xls |
| OpenDocument (LibreOffice, OpenOffice) | .ods |
| Delimited text | .csv, .tsv or pasted text |
What you see
- All sheets as tabs, with the row count summarized in the status line.
- Cell values as Excel displays them – formatted numbers, percentages and dates. For formulas, the last calculated result stored in the file is shown.
- Merged cells rendered with the correct column and row spans.
- Numbers right-aligned for easy scanning, text left-aligned.
- A JSON view of the data: with the header option on, each row becomes an object keyed by the column headers, ready for use in code.
Options
- Sheet – enter a sheet name or its number (1 for the first sheet) to show only that sheet.
- Header row – treat the first row as column headings.
- Grid – show spreadsheet-style column letters (A, B, C…) and row numbers.
- Maximum rows – default 2,000 per sheet, up to 100,000. Large sheets are truncated with a note, which keeps the browser responsive.
Common reasons to use a spreadsheet viewer
- Checking an attachment before downloading it into your main system or forwarding it.
- Reading exports from accounting, CRM, e-commerce and analytics tools, which often produce .xlsx files.
- Working on devices without Office, such as Chromebooks, Linux machines or shared computers.
- Developer work – inspecting the exact values and headers of a file before writing an import script, and grabbing the JSON view as test data.
- Comparing sheets – switch between tabs quickly to see how a workbook is organized.
Dates and number formats
Excel stores dates as serial numbers and applies a display format. The viewer uses the formats stored in the file, so currency, percentages and dates look much as they do in Excel; where a date has no usable format, the unambiguous ISO style (2026-01-04) is used. If a column shows unexpected numbers such as 46026, the cells were probably stored as plain numbers rather than dates in the original file.
What the viewer does not show
This is a data viewer, not a full spreadsheet application. Cell colors, fonts, borders, conditional formatting, charts, images, comments and pivot table layouts are not displayed, and formulas are not recalculated. Macros in .xlsm files are never executed, which makes the viewer a safe way to peek into files from unknown senders. Password-protected (encrypted) workbooks cannot be opened.
Useful follow-ups
To convert the data rather than just view it, use Excel to CSV, Excel to JSON or Excel to HTML. For plain CSV files, the CSV viewer shows delimited text as a table and lets you pick the delimiter.
Privacy
Spreadsheets often contain sensitive business or personal data. The file is read by your browser and never uploaded to a server, so nothing leaves your computer.