Convert Excel to Markdown

Convert Excel to Markdown

When to use this skill

Trigger this skill any time there is a .xlsx file that needs to be understood or processed — for example, a user attaches a spreadsheet and asks questions about it, wants a summary of the data, wants specific rows or values pulled out, or wants multiple workbooks in a folder processed together. Excel's native .xlsx format is a zipped XML bundle that is not reliably readable as plain text, so always convert it to Markdown first using the script in this skill rather than trying to open or parse the file directly.

This skill only supports .xlsx. If asked to convert a legacy .xls file, tell the user it isn't supported and ask them to re-save it as .xlsx (Excel: File > Save As > Excel Workbook (.xlsx)) first.

Mixed file types: When the user references a folder or set of documents containing multiple supported file types (.pdf, .docx, .xlsx), this skill handles only .xlsx files. The agent MUST also invoke the sibling skills in parallel:

• convert-pdf-to-md for any .pdf files
• convert-word-to-md for any .docx files

Never process a folder and silently skip a supported file type. All three skills must be invoked together when mixed types are present.

Setup (once per environment)

Before the first conversion in a given environment, follow references/setup.md step by step to ensure Python, pip, and the markitdown package are installed. Do this proactively rather than guessing whether the environment is ready — the script itself will also fail with a clear pointer back to that file if markitdown turns out to be missing, so it's safe to just try the conversion first if you're reasonably confident setup was already done.

Usage

The conversion script lives at scripts/convert_excel_to_md.py.