SSCONVERT(1)

📦
version 1.12.62 · 3 versions
, in arch rolling, nixpkgs unstable

🌸 ssconvert(1) — the GNOME spreadsheet glow-up machine 🌸

okay bestie, this is the ssconvert(1) page from GNOME, and it’s literally the command line utility that converts spreadsheet files between various spreadsheet file formats. It’s the companion utility to Gnumeric, the powerful spreadsheet program created by the GNOME project. We’re staying for the whole thing. 💅

✨ NAME ✨

ssconvert — a command line spreadsheet format converter. It’s giving “convert spreadsheets between various spreadsheet file formats from your terminal,” no cap. 🦋

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

ssconvert [OPTIONS] infile outfile

ssconvert [OPTIONS] --merge-to outfile infile1 infile2 ...

🌈 DESCRIPTION 🌈

ssconvert is a command line utility to convert spreadsheet files between various spreadsheet file formats. It is a companion utility to Gnumeric, the powerful spreadsheet program created by the GNOME project. Iconic.

ssconvert accepts either file names or URIs as infile and outfile. The special URIs fd://0 and fd://1 can be used for standard input and standard output respectively. Standard streams understood, bestie. 🫶

💖 OPTIONS 💖

This program follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with single letter options starting with a single dash (-) and longer options starting with two dashes (--). GNU syntax supremacy, fr fr.

👑 Main options 👑

  • --recalc — Recalculate all cells before writing the result. The spreadsheet gets a full vibe check and redoes the math first. ✨
  • --set CELL=CONTENTS — Set the value of CELL to CONTENTS. To put an expression in a cell, add an extra =, for example --set "A11==A10+1". This option may be repeated as many times as needed. The workbook will be recalculated after all cells have been set, provided that the workbook is set for automatic recalculation. If not, recalculation can be forced with --recalc. Set the cells, set the vibe. 💅
  • -v, --verbose — Be slightly more verbose about what is going on. Not a full yap session, just slightly. 🗣️
  • --list-exporters — List the available exporters (file formats that can be written). Window shopping for output formats.
  • -T, --export-type=ID — Specify which exporter to use; see below for a list. This is only necessary when the right format does not follow from the output file name. The list of available export formats can be generated using the --list-exporters option. However, when image export is requested using the --export-graphs option, the list of image formats should be consulted instead. That list can be generated using the --list-image-formats option. 🎯
  • -O, --export-options=optionsstring — Specify parameters for the chosen exporter. optionsstring is a list of parameter=value pairs, separated by spaces. The parameter names and values allowed are specific to the exporter and are documented below. Multiple parameters can be specified. Customization era.
  • --export-graphs — Export the graphs (or charts) inside the input spreadsheet to numbered image files (SVG by default). The list of available image formats can be printed with --list-image-formats. 📊✨
  • --list-importers — List the available importers (file formats that can be read). Reading is fundamental.
  • -I, --import-type=ID — Specify which importer to use; see below for a list. This is only necessary when the right format does not follow from the input file name. 🕵️‍♀️
  • --list-image-formats — List the available image formats for graph export. 🖼️
  • -E, --import-encoding=STRING — Specify an encoding for imported content. Encoding check, mandatory.
  • -M, --merge-to=FILENAME — Merge a collection of workbooks into one. Sheet size will expand to the largest in all the workbooks. Names in the scope of individual workbooks will end up in the scope of the merged workbook. The merge will be aborted if there are name conflicts. Group project, but make it spreadsheets. 🫶
  • -S, --export-file-per-sheet — Export a file for each sheet if the exporter only supports one sheet at a time. The output filename is treated as a template in which sheet number is substituted for %n, sheet name is substituted for %s, and sheet object name is substituted for %o in case of graph export. If there are no substitutions, a default of ".%n" is added. Template slay. 🎀

🫶 Help options 🫶

  • --version — Display ssconvert’s version. 👑
  • -h, --help, --usage — Display a brief usage message. Quick lil recap.
  • --help-all — Show all help options. 🌈
  • --help-libspreadsheet — Show Gnumeric options. 🧚

🧚 LIST OF IMPORTER/EXPORTER IDS 🧚

The following IDs can be used both for import (reading) and export (writing). Dual threat IDs, periodt.

💜 LIST OF IMPORTANT IMPORTER IDS 💜

  • Gnumeric_stf:stf_csvtab — Comma or tab separated values (CSV/TSV) (*.csv). 🍓
  • Gnumeric_html:html — HTML (*.html, *.htm). 🌈
  • Gnumeric_Excel:excel — Microsoft Excel (tm) (*.xls). 👑
  • Gnumeric_Excel:excel_xml — Microsoft Excel (tm) 2003 SpreadsheetML. 🎀

🌸 LIST OF OTHER IMPORTER IDS 🌸

🔥 LIST OF IMPORTANT EXPORTER IDS 🔥

  • Gnumeric_OpenCalc:odf — ODF/OpenOffice with foreign elements (*.ods). 👑
  • Gnumeric_glpk:glpk — GLPK Linear Program Solver. Solver moment. 🧮
  • Gnumeric_html:html40 — HTML 4.0 (*.html). 🌸
  • Gnumeric_html:html40frag — HTML (*.html) fragment. 🎀
  • Gnumeric_html:xhtml — XHTML (*.html). 🦋
  • Gnumeric_html:xhtml_range — XHTML range - for export to clipboard. 📋✨
  • Gnumeric_pdf:pdf_assistant — Portable Document Format (*.PDF). 💅
  • Gnumeric_stf:stf_csv — Comma separated values (CSV). 🍓
  • Gnumeric_Excel:excel_dsf — Microsoft Excel (tm) 97/2000/XP & 5.0/95. 🔥

⭐ LIST OF OTHER EXPORTER IDS ⭐

  • Gnumeric_Excel:excel_biff7 — Microsoft Excel (tm) 5.0/95. 💖
  • Gnumeric_Excel:excel_biff8 — Microsoft S Excel (tm) 97/2000/XP. Yes, that “S” is in the source. We keep it. 😭
  • Gnumeric_GnomeGlossary:po — Gnome Glossary PO file format. 🌸
  • Gnumeric_html:html32 — HTML 3.2 (*.html). 🦋
  • Gnumeric_html:latex — LaTeX 2e (*.tex). 🎀
  • Gnumeric_html:latex_table — LaTeX 2e (*.tex) table fragment. ✨
  • Gnumeric_html:roff — TROFF (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troff) (*.me) format. 💜
  • Gnumeric_lpsolve:lpsolve — LPSolve (http://sourceforge.net/projects/lpsolve/) Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) solver. MILP solver icon behavior. 🌈

🎀 OPTIONS FOR THE PORTABLE DOCUMENT FORMAT (*.pdf) EXPORTER 🎀

  • sheet — Name of the workbook sheet to operate on. You can specify several sheets by repeating this option. This is ignored if the object option is given. 📄
  • active-sheet — Select the active sheet to operate on. The value for this option is irrelevant, but the equal sign is mandatory. Equal sign mandatory, bestie. 💅
  • object — Name of the sheet object to print. If this option is given any sheet option is ignored. Only the first object given is exported. 🖼️
  • paper — Paper size. Valid values include "A4" for ISO A4 and "na_letter_8.5x11in" for US Letter. If an individual graph is specified through the object option, then a paper size of "fit" reduces the size of the paper to the size of the graph. 📐✨

✨ OPTIONS FOR THE CONFIGURABLE TEXT (*.txt) EXPORTER ✨

okay bestie, this is the plain-text exporter menu — aka the "make it a .txt file" zone. every flag here is a little dial you can turn, and yes, the defaults are cute but you can absolutely customize the vibe 💅

  • sheet — the name of the workbook sheet to operate on. you can specify several sheets by repeating this option, so go off 👑
  • active-sheet — select the active sheet to operate on. the value for this option is irrelevant, but the equal sign is mandatory. yep, the <kbd>=</kbd> is literally the whole assignment, no cap.
  • eol — End Of Line convention; how lines are terminated. "unix" for linefeed, "mac" for carriage return; "windows" for carriage return plus linefeed. choose your line-ending destiny 🌈
  • charset — the character encoding of the output. defaults to UTF-8. slay, UTF-8 stays winning ✨
  • locale — the locale to use for number and date formatting. defaults to the current locale as reported by locale(1). consult locale -a output for acceptable values. iykyk 🧚
  • quote — the character or string used for quoting fields. defaults to "\"" (quotation mark / double quote). little quote guy doing important work 💖
  • separator — the string used to separate fields. defaults to space. tiny but iconic.
  • format — how cells should be formatted. acceptable values: "automatic" (apply automatic formatting; default), "raw" (output data raw, unformatted), or "preserve" (preserve the formatting from the source document).

this deals with the difference between a cell's contents and the way those contents are formatted. main character energy for spreadsheets, honestly.

consider a cell in a Gnumeric input document that was input as "4/19/73" in a US locale, with a format set to "d-mmm-yyyy" and thus formatted as "19-Apr-1973".

with the default format setting of "automatic" it will be output as "1973/04/19". with "preserve", the formatting will be preserved and it will be output as "19-Apr-1973". with "raw" it will be output as "26773" (Gnumeric's internal representation: days since an epoch). the numbers are giving time-travel lore 🔥

  • formulas — if set to true, formulas will be exported instead of cell values. not the results, the literal formulas. periodt.
  • transliterate-mode — how to handle unrepresentable characters, i.e., characters that cannot be represented in the chosen output character set. acceptable values: "transliterate", or "escape". the former will rewrite characters that cannot be represented in the output character set into an approximation with one or more characters that can. see iconv(1) for more details. the default is "escape" which will replace an unrepresentable character with an escape sequence identifying the unicode code point. very "we found a workaround" of it all 💀
  • quoting-mode — when does data need to be quoted? "never", "auto" (puts quotes where needed), or "always". defaults to "auto". the lowkey perfect middle ground 🫶
  • quoting-on-whitespace — controls whether initial or terminal whitespace forces quoting. defaults to TRUE. those sneaky spaces get noticed, bestie 🌸

🌸 EXAMPLE 🌸

to convert the Gnumeric file foo.gnumeric to a Microsoft Excel(TM) format file foo.xls:

ssconvert foo.gnumeric foo.xls

the export format can be specified explicitly, to override the default (which is based on the file extension):

ssconvert --export-type=Gnumeric_stf:stf_csv foo.xls foo.txt

to convert an Excel format file statfuns.xls to a text file, specifying the semicolon as the separator character:

ssconvert -O 'separator=; format=raw' samples/excel/statfuns.xls statfuns.txt

to export the charts from the input file input.gnumeric to numbered SVG files:

ssconvert --export-graphs input.gnumeric 'output.%n.svg'

to export the charts from the input file input.gnumeric to numbered PNG files:

ssconvert --export-type=png --export-graphs input.gnumeric 'output.%n.png'

💖 LICENSE 💖

ssconvert is licensed under the terms of the General Public License (GPL), version 2 or 3. for information on this license look at the source code that came with the software or see the GNU project page http://www.gnu.org. legal bestie moment, but make it free software 🕊️

the copyright on the Gnumeric software and source code is held by the individual authors as is documented in the source code. respect the authors, they ate 👑

🦋 AUTHOR 🦋

ssconvert's primary author is Jody Goldberg <jody@gnome.org>; ssconvert builds on the Gnumeric codebase. iconic lineage, fr fr.

the initial version of this manpage was written by J.H.M. Dassen (Ray) <jdassen@debian.org>. absolute manpage pioneer behavior 💜

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

💖 source/version and date check, bestie: this little masterpiece comes from gnumeric, dated 2020-04-19, and it's living under SSCONVERT(1) — mwah 💋

📦 where this page comes from