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.

Uploading Workbooks

From Drive, select

Add New

Upload

and follow the prompts to select a file.

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 the Excel-related content types and whether or not Worksheets preserves it when uploading an Excel workbook:

Content Type	Preserved?	Notes
Live data	Yes	Worksheets preserves live data details and formulas only if the report definitions, and all column selections and prompt selections, are the same in both the source tenant you downloaded from, and the destination tenant you're uploading to.
Pivot tables	Yes	If the file was originally a Worksheets workbook, the pivot details panel isn't visible in the downloaded Excel file. When you upload the file, the pivot panel becomes available again if you didn't manually edit any pivot table content outside Worksheets.
Formulas	Yes	Worksheets doesn’t support all Excel functions; a prefix of _XLFN. is added to any function that Worksheets doesn’t support.
Defined names	Yes	We strongly recommend not uploading workbooks containing: Defined names that refer to other files. Defined names that contain #REF errors. Hidden defined names. (Any time you copy an Excel workbook, all defined names are copied and hidden, so you might need to do additional steps to find and remove them.) Any of these situations can cause the upload to fail.
Data values	Yes
Conditional formatting	See notes	Worksheets doesn't support adding conditional formatting rules for data bars or icon sets. If you upload an Excel workbook containing data bars or icon sets, they aren't preserved in the Worksheets workbook. When you download a workbook, Worksheets doesn't preserve these conditional formatting rule types: Top 10 Unique values Duplicate values Contains (text) Does not contain (text) Ends with Begins with Contains blanks Does not contain blanks Contains errors Does not contain errors Time period Above average
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_. When you upload a Worksheets consumer workbook containing external references, the producer workbook must also be on that system (tenant) in order for the references to work.
Charts	No
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.
Structured references (Excel tables)	No

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

File

Download as

and then select an output format.

You can download workbooks into XLSX, PDF, CSV, TSV, or HTML format.

For troubleshooting purposes, you can download a workbook in raw WXF format to provide to Support. To do so, press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + W (Windows) or Command + Option + Shift + W (Mac). This isn't a user-readable format. Worksheets doesn't support using the WXF format to move workbooks between tenants because results can be unpredictable.

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: Charts Comments Data validations Protected ranges
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
Excel	There are 2 formatting options: Microsoft Excel: Use this format when you plan to upload the file into Worksheets again later, such as when you want to copy a workbook from one Workday instance to another. For Worksheets-unique scalar (non-array) formulas, you see a #NAME error in other spreadsheet products. Wherever a workbook formula or value is Worksheets-unique (not compatible with Excel), including structured references, Workday prepends the cell content with identifying text in JSON format such as Workday Unconstrained Array Ext2: or V2.Workbook.valueNumber: . This identifying text is for internal use only; its format might change in future releases, and using custom processes to parse the text isn't supported. Microsoft Excel as Values: Use this format when you are interested in working with or reviewing the data but you don't need to preserve formulas. The downloaded file contains only values, with no formulas or charts. 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	For troubleshooting purposes, you can download a workbook in raw WXF format to provide to Support. To do so, press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + W (Windows) or Command + Option + Shift + W (Mac). This isn't a user-readable format. Worksheets doesn't support using the WXF format to move workbooks between tenants because results can be unpredictable.