Translate Excel spreadsheets. Formulas, formatting, and sheets intact.
Drop your .xlsx and get it back translated cell by cell, with formulas, conditional formatting, named ranges, and multi-sheet structure preserved. Numbers and dates stay numbers.
What is Excel XLSX?
An .xlsx is the Office Open XML container for Excel workbooks. Each sheet, cell, formula, named range, chart, and conditional format is stored as XML inside a ZIP. The challenge for AI translation is touching only translatable strings (labels, headers, free text) while leaving formulas, numbers, dates, and named references untouched.
Why Excel XLSX is tricky for AI translation
- Formulas reference cells by address (=SUM(A1:A10)). Translation must never touch formula content, even if the formula uses functions whose names look like English words.
- Mixed cells contain labels followed by numeric values via concatenation — easy to translate the wrong half.
- Named ranges and table column names are referenced from formulas across sheets. Renaming them silently breaks downstream calculations.
- Conditional formatting rules reference cell ranges and text patterns. Translating the pattern text but not the rule breaks the formatting.
- Pivot tables carry cached field labels and data references. Both pieces need consistent translation.
- Charts have axis labels, legends, and title strings as separate XML elements — easy to skip.
How Fily handles Excel XLSX
- Type-aware cell extraction: only string-type cells are sent to translation. Numbers, dates, booleans, errors, and formula-result cells pass through.
- Formula preservation: the .xlsx formula AST is left untouched; only literal string arguments inside formulas (e.g. TEXT() format codes) are evaluated and selectively translated.
- Named ranges: range names stay; only display labels referencing them are translated.
- Pivot caches: field labels and cached headers translated consistently across pivot definitions and source data.
- Charts: axis titles, legend entries, and chart titles extracted from chart XML and translated as a unit.
- Multi-sheet support: every sheet processed; sheet name translation is opt-in (default off — sheet names often referenced from formulas).
Pipeline: xlsx_qa@1.0.0
The Excel XLSX workflow with Fily
Upload
Drop your .xlsx (single or batch ZIP). Optional: glossary, TM, style guide.
Process
Fily runs the Excel XLSX pipeline + 12 QA steps. Typical job: 10–20 minutes.
Download
Same format, ready to deliver. QA report HTML attached.
Common upload: a multi-sheet client deliverable (financial report, product catalog, KPI dashboard) where labels need translation but every number, formula, and cross-sheet reference must keep working. Open the returned .xlsx in Excel and every calculation still runs.
Beyond the standard pipeline
What we've built around Excel XLSX
Edge cases clients brought us for this format — and the pipelines we shipped to solve them.
mendoza_fda_delta
Delta translation against an approved TM
A regulated-content client updates FDA-reviewed documents constantly, but only a few lines change each cycle. Re-translating the whole file risked drifting away from language a regulator had already approved.
A delta pipeline that diffs the new source against the previous version, translates only what changed, and locks everything else to the approved TM byte-for-byte. New wording gets the AI; approved wording never moves.
Golden TM · auto-build
A translation memory that builds itself
Clients wanted TM leverage but didn't want to maintain a TM — exporting, cleaning and re-importing TMX after every project is a job nobody has time for.
Every confirmed segment is promoted into the organization's Golden TM automatically, scoped per client and language pair, and reused on every future job. Reviewer edits in the dashboard feed straight back in. Exact matches then cost $0.
Frequently asked about Excel XLSX
Other formats Fily translates
Ready to translate a Excel XLSX file?
No card. No setup. Upload one file and see the output.