Concept: Uploading and Downloading Workbooks
Worksheets supports uploading, converting, and downloading several types of files. System-wide settings and workbook permission levels determine whether you have access to these actions.
This topic doesn't cover downloads and uploads of tenant migration workbooks (WXF files). Normally only administrators manage WXF files. People with the appropriate access can refer to the Administrator Guide for more information.
Uploading Workbooks
From Drive, select and follow the prompts to select a file.
When uploading XLSX files, keep in mind that this upload action is intended only for workbooks that contain exclusively Excel-supported content; don't use it to upload workbooks that you worked with in Worksheets and then downloaded to Excel using the Worksheets download action.
When you upload a file in the XLS, XLSX, CSV, or HTML file type, Worksheets automatically converts it into a workbook and also keeps the original file.
Worksheets doesn't convert Excel files to workbooks if they require a password to open.
This table summarizes whether or not Worksheets preserves Excel-related content in uploaded workbooks:
Content Type | Preserved? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Pivot tables | No | Excel pivot tables display as static text (not as pivot tables) in Worksheets. |
Formulas | Yes | Worksheets supports most, but not all, Excel functions. A prefix of _XLFN. is added to any function that Worksheets doesn’t support. |
Data Validation | Yes | |
Defined names | Yes | We strongly recommend not uploading workbooks containing:
Any of these situations can cause the upload to fail. |
Data values | Yes | |
Conditional formatting | Yes, see notes | If you upload an Excel workbook containing data bars or icon sets, they aren't preserved in the Worksheets workbook. |
External references | See notes | When you upload an Excel file containing an Excel-formatted external reference, an error dialog displays. The sheet and cell/range reference are preserved; the workbook name is replaced with WD_EXT_1_. |
Charts and other images | No | If you upload an Excel file containing charts and images to Drive, the charts and images aren't preserved in the Worksheets workbook. |
Visual Basic macros | No | Worksheets doesn't support macros. If an Excel file contains macros, the conversion to a workbook might fail. Save the Excel file without macros before uploading it. |
Oversized Excel Files
For Excel files, check the file size in addition to the number of cells before uploading it. In some cases an Excel file visually appears to be small but the file size is disproportionately large; these files are often referred to as bloated files. A bloated file might upload very slowly or it might fail. You need to eliminate the cause of the oversized file. Here are some common causes and tips:
- Formatting information. Unnecessary formatting is the most common cause of a bloated file. Sometimes formatting rules are applied to a full sheet or to all columns or rows in a sheet; this formatting is invisible but it can dramatically increase the file size. Spreadsheets that were originally created in Google Sheets contain formatting information for all cells up to Z:1000 by default. To determine if formatting is an issue, you can press Ctrl+End to locate the last used cell in a sheet. To eliminate formatting, you can select each data range in the bloated file using Ctrl+Shift+{arrow keys}, and then paste the content into a new XLSX file.
- Hidden sheets. Unhide all the sheets, and remove any that are unnecessary.
- Unused defined names or links to other workbooks in a copied workbook. Excel can retain data associated with defined names and external references even after you break the link to the original workbook. Make sure you delete any unused references.
- Other possible causes of bloat include sharing or revision information, deleted macros, and more.
Downloading Workbooks
In the workbook, select and then select an output format.
You can download workbooks into XLSX, PDF, CSV, TSV, HTML, or WXF format.
This table summarizes special considerations, depending on the format you're downloading to:
Download Format | Notes |
|---|---|
All types | You might need to enable pop-ups in your browser. These Worksheets elements aren't preserved after you download:
Data validations: Worksheets allows for some validation definitions that are more robust than Excel; those validations won't work when downloaded to Excel. |
PDF | Data might be truncated if the cells aren't big enough. Merge or expand cells as needed before downloading to make sure all your data is displayed in the cells, with no overlap into adjacent cells Click File > Download as > PDF document (.pdf) . There are 2 types of options:
|
Excel | Note that live data and the connection to Workday reports isn't preserved in downloaded Excel files. If you need to preserve the live data, download the workbook as a WXF file. There are 3 formatting options:
Because Excel doesn't support instance values or multi-instance values, Worksheets downloads this type of cell content as a string (text). If a cell contains a multi-instance value with many instances in it, the content might be greater than Excel's 32,767 character limit for cells; if this occurs, you see an #N/A error in the cell. |
Non-Excel | Only the currently selected sheet downloads; the automatically assigned filename is workbookname_sheetname.filetype . |
WXF | Download As > Tenant Migration File (.wxf) . You can download this file type for troubleshooting purposes, to provide to Support. This is not a user-readable file format. Normally only administrators manage WXF files. People with the appropriate access can refer to the Administrator Guide for more information. |