Texcel - Excel to LaTeX Table Converter

A best-effort converter for transforming Excel tables into LaTeX format, enabling seamless integration of tabular data into LaTeX documents.

Why Convert Excel to LaTeX?

While Excel is excellent for data management and calculations, LaTeX offers crucial advantages for academic and technical publishing:

Full LaTeX Integration

LaTeX tables provide:

• Perfect font matching: Your table fonts exactly match your document's font family, size, and style
• Professional typesetting: Beautiful mathematical formulas, consistent spacing, and professional layout
• Native integration: Use \cref{} for cross-references, \ac{} for acronyms, and all LaTeX commands
• Publication quality: High-quality output suitable for journals, theses, and conferences

Advanced Features

• Math mode support: Preserve $\gamma=0$, $\pi_H(s)$, and other mathematical notation
• Bold/italic formatting: Maintain cell formatting from Excel
• Multiline format: Each column on a new line for better readability in source code
• Column comments: Automatic header comments show which column data belongs to
• Smart escaping: Proper handling of %, &, $, and other special characters

Installation

Prerequisites

1. Python 3.13+ with pip or uv
2. TeX Live or similar LaTeX distribution (for compiling the output)

Install Dependencies

Using uv (recommended):

uv sync

Or using standard pip:

pip install .

For development purposes, install as editable:

pip install -e .

Usage

Basic Conversion

Excel to LaTeX

# Using uv
uv run excel2latex.py input.xlsx -o output.tex

# Using Python directly
python excel2latex.py input.xlsx -o output.tex

# Using installed command
texcel input.xlsx -o output.tex

LaTeX to Excel

# Using uv
uv run latex2excel.py input.tex -o output.xlsx

# Using installed command
latex2excel input.tex -o output.xlsx

Options

Excel to LaTeX

uv run excel2latex.py --help

Options:

  -o, --output FILE         Output .tex file path (default: output_table.tex)
  -s, --sheet NAME          Sheet name or index (default: 0)
  --no-multiline            Use compact single-line format (default is multiline)
  --no-escape               Don't escape special characters (preserve math notation)
  --no-formatting           Don't preserve bold formatting from Excel
  -c, --caption TEXT        Table caption
  --label TEXT              LaTeX label (e.g., tab:mytable)
  --skip-rows N             Skip N rows at beginning
  --landscape               Use landscape mode (default: True)
  --no-landscape            Use portrait mode
  -w, --width TEXT          First column width (default: 2cm)
  -f, --font SIZE           Font size (tiny, scriptsize, footnotesize, small, normalsize)

LaTeX to Excel

uv run latex2excel.py --help

Options:

  -o, --output FILE         Output .xlsx file path (default: output.xlsx)
  -s, --sheet NAME          Sheet name (default: Sheet1)
  --keep-empty              Keep empty rows in output
  --no-formatting           Don't preserve bold formatting
  -t, --table-index N       Table index to extract (0-indexed, default: 0)

Examples

# Standard Excel to LaTeX conversion (multiline format with comments)
uv run excel2latex.py table.xlsx -o table.tex

# Convert with caption and label
uv run excel2latex.py table.xlsx -o table.tex -c "My Table" -l "tab:mytable"

# Compact single-line format
uv run excel2latex.py table.xlsx -o table.tex --no-multiline

# Preserve math notation without escaping
uv run excel2latex.py table.xlsx -o table.tex --no-escape

# Custom first column width and font size
uv run excel2latex.py table.xlsx -o table.tex -w "3cm" -f footnotesize

# Convert LaTeX back to Excel
uv run latex2excel.py table.tex -o table.xlsx

# Extract specific table from multi-table LaTeX file
uv run latex2excel.py tables.tex -o table.xlsx -t 1

Supported Features

The converter handles the most common Excel/LaTeX table features needed for LaTeX workflows:

Excel → LaTeX

• Cell content: Text, numbers, dates, formulas
• Math notation: $\gamma=0$, $\pi_H(s)$, $\Delta[k_p, k_i]$ preserved
• Bold formatting: Bold cells wrapped in \textbf{}
• Empty rows: Converted to \midrule for visual separation
• Empty columns: Converted to | separators in column specification
• Special characters: Automatic escaping of %, &, $, #, _, etc.
• Column comments: Header names added as comments for readability

LaTeX → Excel

• Tabular/tabularx: Both standard and tabularx environments
• Bold formatting: \textbf{} cells marked as bold in Excel
• Math notation: Preserved as LaTeX text (not converted to Unicode)
• Comments stripped: LaTeX comments (%) properly removed
• Empty cells: Preserved as empty Excel cells
• Multiple tables: Extract specific tables by index

Limitations

• Complex Excel formatting (colors, merged cells) not preserved
• Images and charts not supported
• Excel formulas converted to values only
• LaTeX commands beyond basic formatting are stripped

Workflow

Excel to LaTeX Workflow

1. Create your table in Excel with data and formatting
2. Add math notation using LaTeX syntax (e.g., $\gamma=0$)
3. Run conversion: texcel table.xlsx -o table.tex
4. Include in LaTeX: \input{table.tex} or copy the content
5. Compile: Your table appears with perfect formatting

LaTeX to Excel Workflow

1. Export LaTeX table from your document
2. Run conversion: latex2excel table.tex -o table.xlsx
3. Edit in Excel: Modify data, add rows, etc.
4. Convert back: texcel table.xlsx -o table_updated.tex
5. Replace in document: Update your LaTeX file

Example Output

Input Excel

	Tietze	Kampmeier	McC/Law
Learning Paradigm	Batch, model-based	Sequential, PPO	Meta-RL
Math Test	$\gamma=0$	$\pi_H(s)$	100%

Output LaTeX (Multiline Format)

\begin{table}[p]
    \centering
    \begin{tabularx}{\linewidth}{@{}>{\raggedright\arraybackslash}p{2cm} *{3}{>{\centering\arraybackslash}X}@{}}
        \toprule
             &    \textbf{Tietze}  % Tietze
             &    \textbf{Kampmeier}  % Kampmeier
             &    \textbf{McC/Law}  % McC/Law
             \\

            \textbf{Learning Paradigm}
             &    Batch, model-based  % Tietze
             &    Sequential, PPO  % Kampmeier
             &    Meta-RL  % McC/Law
             \\

            \textbf{Math Test}
             &    $\gamma=0$  % Tietze
             &    $\pi_H(s)$  % Kampmeier
             &    100\%  % McC/Law
             \\
        \bottomrule
    \end{tabularx}
\end{table}

Technical Structure

excel2latex/
├── excel_to_latex.py     # Excel to LaTeX conversion
├── latex_to_excel.py     # LaTeX to Excel conversion
├── pyproject.toml        # Project configuration
├── test_comprehensive.py # Comprehensive test suite
├── test_roundtrip.py     # Round-trip tests
└── README.md             # This file

Testing

Run the test suite with pytest:

uv run pytest

All 29 tests cover:

• Empty column handling
• LaTeX comment stripping
• Empty rows as midrule
• Math symbol preservation
• Percent sign escaping
• Bold formatting
• Round-trip conversion

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to submit issues or pull requests for:

• Support for additional Excel features (colors, merged cells)
• Better formatting preservation
• Performance improvements
• Additional output formats

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgments

• The LaTeX community for excellent documentation and packages
• OpenPyXL for Excel file handling
• Pandas for data manipulation