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BibTeX to Excel Converter

Free. No signup. Runs in your browser.

Paste a .bib file and get Excel (.xlsx) back – not a CSV with the file extension changed. Fixed 14-column layout, header row styled, accents preserved as UTF-8 (no mojibake), one row per entry. Opens cleanly in Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers, and LibreOffice.

How to convert BibTeX to Excel online

Visit the BibTeX to Excel tool page You’re already here. Bookmark thelatexlab.com/bibtex-to-excel/ for next time.
Step 1
Upload or paste your .bib Drop a .bib file using the upload button, or paste the BibTeX text directly. Accent macros (\"a, \'e) decode back to UTF-8. Brace-protected acronyms ({DNA}) lose the braces since Excel has no equivalent mechanism.
Step 2
Confirm Excel is the right output Excel .xlsx is right when you need a native workbook with cell formatting and you’ll open it in Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers, or LibreOffice. For programmatic analysis (Pandas, R, Julia), CSV reads faster and has fewer surprises. For full structured access, JSON preserves more of the original record.
Step 3
Convert, then download The full batch downloads as a single .xlsx file with one styled header row and one row per entry. Open directly – no import-as-text dialog, no encoding picker, no file-format mismatch warning.
Step 4
Parsing and writing both happen in your browser – the .bib content never leaves the tab. The xlsx library loads on demand (about 270 KB gzipped) when you pick Excel as the target, so the page load stays light for everyone else. Entries that fail to parse show up inline with the reason.

Where most BibTeX to Excel converters break

They emit CSV with the wrong extension A surprising number of “Excel” exports are actually CSV with the file renamed to .xlsx. Excel handles them – it pops up a “the file format and extension don’t match” warning and offers to import. Numbers and LibreOffice are less forgiving. The tool emits a real .xlsx file using the OpenXML format – cell metadata, content types, relationships, the lot.
real .xlsx OpenXML format
Accents arrive mangled (mojibake) CSV-renamed-to-xlsx files inherit CSV’s encoding ambiguity: open them in Excel-on-Windows and “Krämer” becomes “Krämer”. A real .xlsx stores strings as UTF-16 internally in the OpenXML shared-strings table, so there’s no encoding-detection step. The tool writes a real .xlsx, so accents stay intact.
UTF-16 internal no encoding ambiguity
Header row isn’t a header row Excel and Google Sheets both have a notion of “header row” that affects filtering, freezing, and table styles. CSV doesn’t have this concept – the first row is just the first row. The tool emits a styled header row in the .xlsx so the spreadsheet recognises the column names as headers when you sort, filter, or create a chart.
styled header filter-ready
Column structure varies per entry Converters that emit “whichever fields the first entry had” produce a spreadsheet where rows have different shapes. The tool emits the same fixed 14-column layout as CSV: type, citation_key, title, authors, year, journal_or_booktitle, volume, issue, pages, doi, isbn, issn, publisher, url. Missing fields are empty cells rather than absent.
14 columns fixed schema
Multi-author entries collapse into one cell using BibTeX’s and separator (“Smith, John and Doe, Jane”) rather than a plain comma. If you need to split authors into separate rows or columns later, the consistent separator makes that a clean spreadsheet operation.

Frequently asked questions

The data shape is identical (same 14 columns, same authors-joined-with-and convention), but the file format is different. .xlsx is a real Excel workbook with cell-level metadata, a styled header row, and UTF-16 string storage. CSV is plain text with comma separators and a UTF-8 BOM. Pick xlsx when you’ll open in Excel / Sheets / Numbers; pick CSV for scripted analysis (Pandas, R, Julia).

Yes. Google Sheets imports .xlsx directly through Drive (drag the file in or use File → Import) and converts to a native Sheets document. Numbers (macOS) opens .xlsx directly via double-click and offers a “convert to Numbers” option. LibreOffice opens xlsx natively too. Most cell formatting (bold header, column widths) carries across.

The xlsx library that writes Excel files loads on demand when you pick Excel as the target – about 270 KB gzipped. The output file itself stays small (a 50-entry bibliography is typically under 20 KB). The 270 KB figure is the JavaScript chunk that runs the conversion, not the file you download.

Three common culprits: (1) the file is actually RIS, EndNote, or NBIB; (2) a missing closing brace – one bad entry blocks the parser at that point; (3) @string macros without definitions. Each failing entry shows up inline with the reason.

Free, no signup. Parsing and writing both run entirely in your browser – the .bib file or pasted text never touches our server, no network call is made. The output exists in your browser session and disappears when you close the tab.

You Have a Word or PDF File. We'll Convert it to Submission-Ready LaTeX.

We convert Word documents and PDFs into clean, submission-ready LaTeX for IEEE, Springer, Elsevier, ACM, arXiv, and more. Equations, tables, citations, and journal templates included. Compiled and tested in Overleaf before delivery.

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