# Excel files & Julia?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/excel-files-julia/91253>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** excel\
**Created:** [December 5, 2022, 10:24am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/excel-files-julia/91253 "2022-12-05T10:24:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![BLI](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/bli/32/37206_2.png) [@BLI](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/BLI)\
**Post date:** [December 5, 2022, 10:24am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/excel-files-julia/91253/1 "2022-12-05T10:24:26Z")

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It’s exam time, and I need to script the reading of content from a number of Excel files, put the information into a DataFrame, compute grades, and write the result to an Excel file.

Last time I did this, I used package `ExcelFiles` + `DataFrames` (in 2020). It seems like `ExcelFiles` was last updated in 2019.

- What is the best way to read the content of Excel files in Julia at the moment
- Similarly for writing to Excel files

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**Author:** ![nilshg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/nilshg/32/2283_2.png) [@nilshg](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/nilshg)\
**Post date:** [December 5, 2022, 10:35am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/excel-files-julia/91253/2 "2022-12-05T10:35:38Z")

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I think most people use [`XSLX.jl`](https://felipenoris.github.io/XLSX.jl/stable/), although that would have been true in 2020 as well so maybe there was a specific reason why you didn’t choose it then?

In any case if you’re essentially doing the same thing you did 2 years ago and it worked for you at that point you might not want to chang anything - just re-instantiate the manifest from when you last did this and work with the versions of packages that worked for you last time!

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**Author:** ![BLI](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/bli/32/37206_2.png) [@BLI](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/BLI)\
**Post date:** [December 5, 2022, 10:41am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/excel-files-julia/91253/3 "2022-12-05T10:41:42Z")

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I have to modify it… the way to compute grades has changed :-o. I don’t remember why I chose ExcelFiles last time, but will check XSLX.

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**Author:** ![ellocco](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/ellocco/32/31331_2.png) [@ellocco](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ellocco)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2023, 6:46am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/excel-files-julia/91253/4 "2023-06-26T06:46:22Z")

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The package XLSX seems to be still in an early state. In my case a number written in the form of `-5,01085245571595E-09` caused `readxlsx()` to crash with the missleading error message [ERROR: Styles not found for this workbook](https://github.com/felipenoris/XLSX.jl/issues/233).  
What about [Pandas.jl](https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/reference/api/pandas.read_excel.html)?

Remark:  
It might be that the issue is caused by the digital delimiter char,  
which is on my machine the comma `,`.

Followup:  
After I have tried the alternatives: `Taro.jl`, `PyCall-pandas`, `Pandas.jl` I have to admit,  
the others are also failing with my Excel-File.

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**Author:** ![Jake](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/jake/32/46007_2.png) [@Jake](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Jake)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2023, 10:37am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/excel-files-julia/91253/5 "2023-06-26T10:37:27Z")

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I use XLSX successfully, and OdsIO for LibreOffice. I only use North American decimal characters though.

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**Author:** ![TimG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/82dd89/32.png) [@TimG](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/TimG)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 2026, 6:34pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/excel-files-julia/91253/6 "2026-08-29T18:34:55Z")

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> [@ellocco](#):
>
> In my case a number written in the form of `-5,01085245571595E-09` caused `readxlsx()` to crash with the missleading error message [ERROR: Styles not found for this workbook](https://github.com/felipenoris/XLSX.jl/issues/233)

The error reported in this issue arises not because of the written form of the number but because the file being read does not comply with ECMA-376 standard.

Recent versions of XLSX.jl now also read ISO/IEC 29500 (strict) Excel files, too, so this file should now read without trouble.

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**Author:** ![ellocco](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/ellocco/32/31331_2.png) [@ellocco](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ellocco)\
**Post date:** [September 1, 2026, 6:14am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/excel-files-julia/91253/7 "2026-09-01T06:14:51Z")

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Thanks a lot 🙂