Excel to LaTeX: convert a table from a spreadsheet

Choose a way

The first two ways use our LaTeX Tables Generator. It reads an imported file in your browser: the file does not go to our server.

Copy and paste from Excel

1. In Excel, select the cells of the table. Press Ctrl+C (Cmd+C on a Mac).
2. Open the LaTeX Tables Generator. Click the top left cell of the table and press Ctrl+V. The table grows to take all the cells.
3. The LaTeX code is under the table. Choose the options (see Make the table ready) and click Copy to clipboard.

Excel puts the cells on the clipboard as a web page table, with their formatting. The editor reads the merged cells, the font style, the colours, the alignment and the borders from it. Each number comes as Excel shows it: if a cell shows 12.4%, the LaTeX cell is 12.4\%, not 0.12403....

The grid lines that Excel draws on all cells are not borders. Only the borders that you added in Excel come with the cells. If the table has none, add lines in the editor, or select Style: Booktabs, which needs only a top and a bottom border.

In our editor To paste only the text, without the formatting, use File › Paste table data and clear Paste with formatting.

Import an Excel file

1. Open the LaTeX Tables Generator.
2. Select File › Import CSV or Excel file and choose the .xlsx file.
3. If the workbook has more than one sheet, choose the sheet.

The editor takes the cells from the first to the last cell with text, so empty rows and columns around the table are left out. Each cell comes with its merged cells, its formatting and its number format, as Excel shows it. A column that has its own width in Excel gets that width in LaTeX (a p{} column, whose text breaks into lines). To make it as wide as its text again, double-click the right edge of its header.

Old .xls files and files with a password cannot be imported. Open them in Excel and save them as Excel Workbook (.xlsx). A CSV file works too, but it has no formatting.

Google Sheets, LibreOffice, Numbers and Word

• Google Sheets. Copy and paste works as from Excel. To import the file, select File › Download › Microsoft Excel (.xlsx) in Google Sheets.
• LibreOffice Calc. Copy and paste, or save the sheet as .xlsx (File › Save As, type Excel 2007-365) and import it.
• Apple Numbers. Select File › Export To › Excel and import the .xlsx file.
• Microsoft Word. Select the table in Word, copy it and paste it in the editor. Its merged cells and borders come with it.

Make the table ready for your document

A table that looks good in Excel is not always a good table in a document. Excel shows grid lines, colours and many digits, so that you can work with the data. A document table must be easy to read. This is the same quarterly report as a LaTeX table:

LaTeX · needs booktabs Copy

\begin{tabular}{lrrr}
\toprule
\textbf{Region} & \textbf{Q1} & \textbf{Q2} & \textbf{Change} \\
\midrule
North & 12,400 & 13,150 & 6.0\%  \\
South & 9,870  & 9,420  & -4.6\% \\
West  & 15,020 & 16,880 & 12.4\% \\
\midrule
Total & 37,290 & 39,450 & 5.8\%  \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}

• Use the booktabs style. Select Style: Booktabs in the options. It draws three rules and no vertical lines, as journals do. The rule above the total row is a border under the West row.
• Remove the background colours that you used to work with the data in Excel. Keep a colour only if it means something to the reader. Select the cells and use Table › Clear formatting or the colour buttons of the toolbar.
• Round the numbers in Excel before you copy them. Three significant digits are enough for most readers. Use the same number of decimal places in a column.
• Align the numbers to the right and the text to the left.
• Add a caption and a label in the options, so that the text can refer to the table as Table 1. See Add a caption.
• Keep Escape special characters selected. Cells from a spreadsheet often have %, &, $ or _, which LaTeX uses for its code. The editor writes them as \%, \& and so on.
• A wide sheet may not fit on the page. Give the columns with long text a width, or select Width: Wrap to text width. See Tables that do not fit.
• A long sheet of more than about 40 rows does not fit on one page. Select Long table: Split across pages.

Convert with code: Python and R

If you make the same table every week, or from the results of an analysis, write a few lines of code. Then the table changes when the data changes, and you do not copy anything by hand.

Python with pandas

import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_excel('sales.xlsx', sheet_name='Report')  # needs openpyxl
latex = df.to_latex(index=False, float_format='%.1f')  # needs jinja2
with open('sales-table.tex', 'w') as f:
    f.write(latex)

to_latex writes a tabular with booktabs rules, so load \usepackage{booktabs}. In your document, write \input{sales-table} in a table float, under the caption.

R with knitr

library(readxl)
df <- read_excel("sales.xlsx", sheet = "Report")
knitr::kable(df, format = "latex", booktabs = TRUE, digits = 1)

Code is best for plain tables of numbers. Merged header cells, colours and other formatting take much more code. For a table that you make once, the editor is faster.

There is also Excel2LaTeX, an add-in for the desktop version of Excel that converts the selected cells.

From LaTeX back to Excel

To move a LaTeX table to Excel, Google Sheets or Word:

1. In the LaTeX Tables Generator, select File › From LaTeX code, paste the code of the table and click Load. The editor reads tabular, tabularx and longtable tables, their merged cells, lines and colours.
2. Click a cell of the table and press Ctrl+A to select all cells. Press Ctrl+C.
3. Paste the cells in Excel or Word. The merged cells, the text style, the colours and the borders come with them.

The editor removes LaTeX's escapes, so 12.4\% becomes 12.4%. To get a file, select File › Download as CSV and open the file in the spreadsheet.

Problems and fixes