How to Export Excel Files to CSV and Text Formats Exporting Excel sheets to flat text files like CSV and TXT is essential for moving data into databases, programming scripts, and customer relationship management software. Because text files discard Excel formulas and cell styling, they focus completely on raw data portability. How to Export Excel to CSV (Comma Delimited)
The standard Comma-Separated Values (CSV) file format structures data by separating each column value with a comma and ending each row with a line break. Open your workbook in Microsoft Excel. Click the File tab in the top-left ribbon. Select Save As or Save a Copy from the menu panel. Click Browse to choose your destination folder.
Open the Save as type dropdown menu below the file name box.
Choose CSV (Comma delimited) (.csv) from the format listings. Click Save to generate your new plain-text data file.
Note: If your dataset contains international characters, accents, or special symbols, choose CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) (.csv) in step 5 instead to preserve character encoding. How to Export Excel to Tab-Delimited Text (.txt)
Tab-delimited text files use a hidden horizontal tab space to separate columns instead of a comma, which prevents formatting issues if your actual cell data already contains literal commas.
Import or export text (.txt or .csv) files – Microsoft Support
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