About XLSX Files
Excel Spreadsheet
XLSX is the modern Microsoft Excel format based on Open XML. It is the industry standard for spreadsheets, supporting formulas, charts, pivot tables, and conditional formatting.
Family
Spreadsheets & Data
Extension
.xlsx
MIME Type
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet
Can Use As
HOW XLSX
CAME TO BE.
XLSX is the XML-based successor to the legacy binary .xls format that ruled business computing from 1987. Introduced with Excel 2007 as part of the Office Open XML standard, it reorganized the entire spreadsheet data model into a bundle of XML files inside a ZIP archive — each worksheet, style, formula set, and chart stored separately.
The structural change made files smaller, more robust to corruption, and far easier for third-party tools to parse. XLSX is now the world's default format for financial models, inventory lists, scientific data, and the occasional 1-million-row monster that someone really should have put in a database.
CURIOSITIES &
TRIVIA.
An .xlsx file is a ZIP archive — rename it to .zip and you can browse the internal XML.
Excel supports exactly 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns per worksheet — a 20-bit × 14-bit address space.
A single XLSX file can have many worksheets, each up to ~17 billion cells (mostly empty).
The 2010 UK population census lost 16,000 COVID cases because someone hit Excel's row limit in an XLS file.
Formulas are stored as plain text inside XML — including the cached result Excel computed last.
STRENGTHS &
LIMITATIONS.
Strengths
- Much smaller than legacy .xls files thanks to ZIP + XML.
- Human-readable structure — easy to extract data programmatically.
- Supports macros (as .xlsm variant), charts, pivot tables, conditional formatting.
- Universal support: Excel, LibreOffice, Google Sheets, Numbers, pandas.
- ISO/IEC 29500 standardized.
Limitations
- Macros in .xlsm are a common malware vector — disabled by default in Office.
- 1M-row limit is a cultural problem — people put too much data in Excel.
- Subtle formula differences between Excel, LibreOffice, and Sheets.
- Large files with many formulas recalculate slowly.
Typical Sizes & Weights
Small budget spreadsheet
20–80 KB
Financial model with charts
1–10 MB
Large dataset (100k rows)
10–50 MB
Enterprise model (1M+ rows)
100–500 MB
Technical Specifications
- MIME type
- application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet
- Container
- ZIP (Office Open XML)
- Max rows
- 1,048,576
- Max columns
- 16,384
- Released in
- Microsoft Office 2007
- Variants
- .xlsx, .xlsm (macros), .xlsb (binary)
CONVERT FROM
XLSX
Common Use Cases
Financial data, business reports, data analysis, budgets.
Related Formats
Popular comparisons
XLSX vs PDF
Differences, file size, and when to choose each format.
XLSX vs CSV
Differences, file size, and when to choose each format.
XLSX vs JPG
Differences, file size, and when to choose each format.
XLSX vs PNG
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XLSX vs TXT
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XLSX vs HTML
Differences, file size, and when to choose each format.
Popular XLSX conversions
The most-requested destinations when starting from XLSX.
Frequently Asked Questions about XLSX
Frequently Asked Questions
XLSX is the default spreadsheet format for Microsoft Excel since 2007. It is based on the Office Open XML standard and supports multiple sheets, formulas, charts, pivot tables, and conditional formatting.
XLSX files open in Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets (free), LibreOffice Calc (free), and Apple Numbers. Online viewers like OneDrive and Google Drive also support them.
Use XLSX when you need formatting, formulas, multiple sheets, or charts. Use CSV for simple tabular data that needs to be imported into databases, scripts, or tools that require plain text data interchange.