Report Excel workbooks

tabalyst report reads Excel workbooks as well as CSV and JSON files:

tabalyst report sales.xlsx

This creates sales.report.html (the report), sales.report.json (the profile) and executions.json beside sales.xlsx. The .report part keeps the profile from replacing a source with the same stem. -o and -d work as for CSV files, and .xlsx and .xlsm files are accepted. The workbook is never modified.

Which table is analyzed

A report analyzes one table: a sheet, or a named Excel table inside a sheet. When the workbook has one sheet with one table, the command needs nothing else. Tabalyst finds the header of the sheet, even under a title or blank rows, and reports the rows under it.

When several tables are plausible, the command stops with exit code 2 before analyzing anything and lists them, as for JSON files. Choose one with --collection, once, or set it in the Inspect file:

tabalyst report shop.xlsx --collection Costs
tabalyst report shop.xlsx --collection '$.Sales.Orders'

Costs is a sheet, $.Sales.Orders the named table Orders of the sheet Sales. A sheet name that is not a plain identifier is quoted: '$["Q1 2026"]'. The command that stops lists one ready-to-run command per table, so you only copy the one you want and run it again:

Choose the table to analyze:
  tabalyst report shop.xlsx --collection Costs
  tabalyst report shop.xlsx --collection '$["Sales Q1"]'
Or report every table: tabalyst report shop.xlsx --all-collections

tabalyst inspect shop.xlsx prints the same lines. Inspect Excel workbooks explains how the table is chosen and how to set the header row when the detection is wrong.

Every table of a workbook

To report all the tables in one command, add --all-collections:

tabalyst report shop.xlsx --all-collections
tabalyst report shop.xlsx --all-collections -d reports

Each table gets its own pair of files, named <file>.<collection-slug>: shop.costs.html and shop.costs.json for the sheet Costs, and shop.sales-q1.html and shop.sales-q1.json for Sales Q1 (lower case, without accents, every other character a hyphen). A named table of a sheet gives shop.sales-orders.html. Empty sheets, sheets without a header and hidden sheets are left out, the last with a warning: report one with --collection.

-d chooses the folder and is optional for one workbook, which writes beside the source; with several files it is required. --all-collections cannot be used with -o, --collection or --scan, and existing files stop the command unless you pass --force. See tabalyst report for every option.

Columns

The columns of the report are the columns of the header, named by their header cell. A repeated or empty header gets a distinct name (id#1, id#2) and an ambiguous_headers issue. Every filled row under the header is a row of the report; blank rows are skipped, and an empty cell is a missing value.

Cells keep their Excel type. Numbers are integers or decimals, booleans are booleans, and dates are read as dates, so the report shows their formats and ranges. Excel has one number type: a whole number is an integer, even in a column of decimal amounts. A formula is read as its last calculated value. Merged cells only hold their value in the top-left cell.

The report is built on Tabalyst Scan, so the detectors, the masking of sensitive values and every other analysis work as for CSV files. A report of a workbook has no encoding or delimiter, and its profile source.format is excel.

Limits

One table per report, no recognition of blocks separated by blank rows or of total rows under the data, and error cells read as empty. The known limitations list them with the size limits.