TIP SpreadsheetReaderPlugin is not installed on Foswiki.org.


Read data from a spreadsheet

This plugin can read common spreadsheet documents and renders them as HTML. Supported file formats are:

  • xls
  • xlsx
  • ods
  • csv


%SPREADSHEET{"test.xlsx" sheet="2"}%


The %SPREADHSHEET{...}% makro takes the following parameters:

Parameter Description Default
"..." or attachment="..." file name of an uploaded spreadsheet file  
web="...", topic="..." location of the spreadsheet file current topic
password="..." password to unlock a protected spreadsheet  
sep="..." (only csv) column separator for csv files  
strip="on/off" boolean flag to strip whitespaces of a cell content on
quote="..." (only csv) quote character for cells in a csv files  
sheets="..." or sheet="..." sheets to extract (1-based); this may a single sheet or a comma separated list of sheets, or the keyword all 1
rows="..." list of rows to extract data from; this may be a comma separated list of row numbers, a list of row intervals (see explanation below), or the keyword =all" all
cols="..." list of columns to extract data from; this is either a comma separated list of column numbers or letters, a list of column intervals, or the keyword =all" all
class="..." css class to add to the HTML table being rendered foswikiTable
showattrs="on/off" boolean switch to extract cell attributes such as bold, italic, foreground- and background colors, alignment; set this to off to get the raw HTML table only; note that this currently only works reliably for xls and xlsx files on
showindex="on/off" boolean switch to display a row index off
<headerName_include="..." regular expression a column must match for the row to be included in the output (see explanation below)  
<headerName_exclude="..." regular expression a column must not match for the row to be included in the output  

Rows and column intervals

The rows and columns to be displayed may be specified using a list of intervals such as


This will select rows 1,2,5,6,7,8,9 and 12.

Similarly columns may be specified using an interval description of uppercase alphabetic letters such as in


This will select all columns except columns G, H, I, J.

An interval of rows (or columns) can be either a closed interval starting at a specific row up to an ending row, or be a half-open interval such as cols="K-" which will select all columns from K on, or rows=-10 to list the first ten rows.

Filtering rows

The two parameters <headerName_include="..." and <headerName_exclude="..." may be used to filter rows by regular expressions.



This will list only those rows where the value of the row "IT-Systems" matches the given expression. Note that the actual parameter to depict the column to be checked is generated from the first line of the spreadsheet which is considered to be the header line. To please the attribute parser specification of TML, parameter names are normalized to a certain degree stripping off any non-alpabetic non-numeric characters. That's why the parameter is callded ITSystems_include when reading values of the "IT-Systems" column.

Installation Instructions



cd /path/to/foswiki
perl tools/extension_installer <NameOfExtension> install




Change History

31 May 2018 fix use of uninitialized variable; fix strip whitespaces
28 May 2018 fix encoding of spreadsheets; implement row and column interval syntax
17 Apr 2018 initial release
Topic revision: r3 - 31 May 2018, MichaelDaum - This page was cached on 13 Aug 2019 - 19:13.
