SSCONVERT(1)

NAME
ssconvert - a command line spreadsheet format converter

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

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 (`--').

  Main options

--recalc
    Recalculate all cells before writing the result.

--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.

-v, --verbose
    Be slightly more verbose about what is going on.

--list-exporters
    List the available exporters (file formats that can be written).

-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

--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). -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.

-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.

-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.

  Help options

--version
    Display ssconvert's version.

-h, --help, --usage
    Display a brief usage message.

--help-all
    Show all help options.

--help-libspreadsheet
    Show Gnumeric options.

LIST OF IMPORTER/EXPORTER IDS
The following IDs can be can be used both for import (reading) and export (writing).

Gnumeric_XmlIO:sax
    Gnumeric's XML file format (*.gnumeric)

Gnumeric_OpenCalc:openoffice
    or (*.sxc, *.ods) format. As an exporter, this is ODF/OpenOffice without foreign elements (*.ods).

Gnumeric_dif:dif
    (*.dif)

Gnumeric_paradox:paradox
    or primary index file (*.db, *.px)

Gnumeric_stf:stf_assistant
    Text (configurable)

Gnumeric_sylk:sylk
    (*.slk)

Gnumeric_Excel:xlsx
    Microsoft Excel (tm) 2007 ("Office Open XML", ) format

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

Gnumeric_QPro:qpro
    (*.wb1, *.wb2, *.wb3)

Gnumeric_applix:applix
    Applix (*.as)

Gnumeric_lotus:lotus
    (*.wk1, *.wks, *.123)

Gnumeric_mps:mps
    Linear programming and mixed integer programming file format (*.mps)

Gnumeric_oleo:oleo
    (*.oleo)

Gnumeric_plan_perfect:pln
    PlanPerfect Format (PLN)

Gnumeric_psiconv:psiconv
    Psion (*.psisheet)

Gnumeric_sc:sc
    SC/xspread

Gnumeric_xbase:xbase
    (*.dbf) file format

LIST OF IMPORTANT EXPORTER IDS

Gnumeric_OpenCalc:odf
    ODF/OpenOffice with foreign elements (*.ods)

Gnumeric_glpk:glpk
    GLPK Linear Program Solver

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

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
    (*.me) format.

Gnumeric_lpsolve:lpsolve
    Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) solver

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.

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

sheet
    Name of the workbook sheet to operate on. You can specify several sheets by repeating this option.

active-sheet
    Select the active sheet to operate on. The value for this option is irrelevant, but the equal sign is mandatory.

eol End Of Line convention; how lines are terminated. "unix" for linefeed, "mac" for carriage return; "windows" for carriage return plus linefeed.

charset
    The character encoding of the output. Defaults to UTF-8.

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.

quote
    The character or string used for quoting fields. Defaults to "\"" (quotation mark / double quote).

separator
    The string used to separate fields. Defaults to space.

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. 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).

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.

quoting-mode
    When does data need to be quoted? "never", "auto" (puts quotes where needed), or "always". Defaults to "auto".

quoting-on-whitespace
    Controls whether initial or terminal whitespace forces quoting. Defaults to TRUE.

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

COPYRIGHT
The copyright on the Gnumeric software and source code is held by the individual authors as is documented in the source code.

AUTHOR
ssconvert's primary author is Jody Goldberg <jody@gnome.org>; ssconvert builds on the Gnumeric codebase. The initial version of this manpage was written by J.H.M. Dassen (Ray) <jdassen@debian.org>.

SEE ALSO
gnumeric(1), ssdiff(1), ssgrep(1), ssindex(1)