Excel to SQL Converter
Convert any Excel spreadsheet to SQL INSERT statements. Choose your database dialect, set the table name, preview the output, and download a ready-to-run .sql file. Your file never leaves your browser.
Drop your Excel file here
or click to browse — .xlsx and .xls supported
How to Convert Excel to SQL
Upload your file
Drop your .xlsx or .xls file onto the tool. Your data is read locally — nothing is sent to a server.
Set table name
Enter your target database table name. The tool sanitises it for SQL compatibility automatically.
Choose dialect
Select your database engine: MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, or SQL Server to get correct identifier quoting.
Download .sql
Preview the first statements, then download the full .sql file or copy all statements to your clipboard.
Common Use Cases
Excel is the most common format for data shared between non-technical stakeholders and database teams. Converting Excel to SQL INSERT statements bridges that gap without requiring a database admin to import manually:
- Seed data for development: Populate test databases with realistic sample data from a spreadsheet without writing INSERT statements by hand.
- One-time data migrations: Import a historical dataset from an Excel export into a new database schema as part of a migration project.
- Reference table population: Load lookup tables, product catalogues, pricing tables, or configuration data maintained in Excel into a production database.
- Reporting database imports: Move data from Excel reports into a reporting database or data warehouse for aggregation with other sources.
For large datasets (10,000+ rows), using CSV export with a bulk-load command (MySQL LOAD DATA INFILE, PostgreSQL COPY) is significantly faster than individual INSERT statements.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does the Excel to SQL converter work?
The tool reads your Excel file in your browser using the SheetJS library. It treats the first row as column names (sanitising them for SQL compatibility) and each subsequent row as a data row, generating one INSERT statement per row. Empty cells become NULL, numbers are unquoted, and text values are single-quoted with escaped apostrophes.
Which SQL dialects are supported?
The tool supports MySQL and MariaDB (backtick identifier quoting), PostgreSQL (double-quote identifier quoting), SQLite (backtick quoting, compatible with most SQL), and Microsoft SQL Server (bracket identifier quoting). Select your dialect before downloading to get correctly formatted identifiers.
What happens to column names with spaces or special characters?
Column names are automatically sanitised for SQL compatibility: spaces and special characters are replaced with underscores, and names starting with a digit get a leading underscore. For example, "Order Date" becomes "Order_Date" and "2024 Sales" becomes "_2024_Sales".
Are my Excel files uploaded to a server?
No. All processing happens in your browser using JavaScript. Your file is never sent to any server, stored, or seen by anyone else.
Can I use this to import data into my database?
Yes. Download the .sql file and run it in your database client — MySQL Workbench, pgAdmin, TablePlus, DBeaver, or the command-line client. The file contains one INSERT statement per data row, ready to execute. For very large datasets, consider using LOAD DATA INFILE (MySQL) or COPY (PostgreSQL) with our CSV export instead, as those bulk-load approaches are significantly faster.
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