Linux is an excellent OS. Today something again proved my choice.
I was looking for a solution to convert Excel xls to csv format. This conversion is required by a Magento dataflow project.
Magento native dataflow comes with an XML Excel parser. For some reasons, it does not convert my xls files. I think it may be due to limited functionality of Magento XML Excel parser class, or encoding problem.
I need something which can reliably convert xls files from 3rd parties, which we have no control over how they produce xls files.
I was thinking of another php independent class called ExcelReader. However, ExcelReader goes beyond what I need. All I need is convert xls to csv, make ready for dataflow.
After a day’s research, finally xls2csv caught my attention. I would have found it earlier if I had searched by “linux command line convert xls to csv” earlier. It runs perfectly well on Fedora and CentOS as I tested.
Installation is straight forward. Run
yum install catdoc
FYI, yum install xls2csv, installs something totally different. I have not figured out what it is.