Convert XLS to Google Sheets with formats intact

Google Sheets can open XLS, but old files often import badly: accented text appears garbled, some date cells turn into numbers, and certain legacy formulas show errors. Teams moving from Excel to Google Workspace see this across whole archives.

XlsConverter first rebuilds the workbook in the modern Open XML structure that Sheets handles best, then hands it to Drive. If you only need the file upgraded locally, XLS to XLSX does that. For an older workbook going to a database instead, see XLS to SQL.

How to convert XLS to Google Sheets in three steps

1. 1Upload the XLS workbook or a batch of them.
2. 2Choose to download a Sheets ready file or save it to a connected Drive folder.
3. 3Convert and open the result in Google Sheets.

Formulas and encodings that Google Sheets misreads in XLS

Google Sheets supports most Excel functions, but legacy XLS files may contain functions from the old Analysis ToolPak, macros written in VBA, or references to external workbooks on another person's drive. Macros never run in Sheets, and external links break. We flag such cells in the job report, and the keep formulas option can replace unsupported formulas with their last values so the sheet still shows correct numbers.

Text encoding is the other common issue. An XLS saved on a Central European Windows machine stores text in code page 1250, and the import can misread it. Because we decode the code page and write Unicode into the new workbook, Sheets receives clean text. Dates are written as true dates, so they sort and filter correctly.

Google Sheets has a cell limit per spreadsheet (10 million cells) rather than a row limit, so even XLS archives with several full 65,536 row sheets fit. Very wide data with many empty columns uses that budget quickly, so we trim empty trailing columns. If a modern workbook is the source, XLSX to CSV is often enough for a quick Sheets import, and Numbers to Excel helps Mac users with the same move.