Excel files (.xls, .xlsx) are widely used for organizing, analyzing, and storing data in tabular form. These files are commonly used for managing localization data, making it easy to handle large volumes of translation strings and their corresponding metadata. Lokalise supports both .xls and .xlsx formats, allowing seamless integration of your Excel files for localization management.
When preparing translations for uploading in Excel format to Lokalise, you have two options:
Technical information
Overview
Format name:
Excel
File extensions:
.xls, .xlsx
Common use cases:
Managing and organizing localization data, including translation strings, metadata, and other related information in a structured tabular format.
Technical details:
Structure: Excel files are spreadsheet documents that consist of rows and columns forming cells. Each cell can contain data, such as text, numbers, formulas, and other types of information. The .xls format is based on the binary interchange file format (BIFF), while the .xlsx format is based on Office Open XML (OOXML).
Encoding: UTF-8 for .xlsx, various encodings for .xls (depending on the system and settings used to create the file)
Known limitations and special notes
Currently we support Spreadsheets (
.xls) and Excel Workbooks (.xlsx). The latter is the default format in Excel 2007 and later versions.Lokalise will remove duplicates if your Excel file contains the same text in different rows.
We don't support importing Excel files with multiple sheets (tabs). Only the first sheet will be utilized.
Excel files can contain key comments as explained below. These will always be treated as parent-level comments: it's not possible to import or export replies to parent comments or translation-level comments.
Excel file format is supported only by projects with Web and mobile type. The type is selected during the project creation.
One language per Excel file
If you choose this approach, then you'll need to separate translations for different languages into multiple files. The principle is one worksheet and one language per file. It is also advised to name the files after the locale codes (en, de, fr, etc.) so that Lokalise can detect the language properly.
File format
Your Excel file should contain the following columns:
Key name (required)
Translation (optional)
Description (optional)
Comment (optional)
Here is an example of a valid Excel file with two translation keys (welcome and country):
The order of the columns may be different if you are uploading via the web interface because it is possible to designate arbitrary columns as key name, translation, and so on. However, if you are importing via the API or the CLI tool, the columns must follow the order shown above.
Uploading file
Proceed to the Upload page:
Choose one or more files from your PC. You will be presented with the following dialog:
Using these dropdowns you may specify what data each column contains or ignore the given column:
Once you are ready, press Apply and then click Import the files to start the uploading process.
Check the Activity page to view the status of your upload:
Downloading file
To download translations in Excel format, proceed to the Download page and choose Excel from the Format dropdown:
Excel format belongs to the Other platform therefore make sure that your translation keys are assigned to this format:
You can learn more about keys and platforms in the corresponding article.
After the download operation is completed, translations for different languages will be placed into separate files:
Please remember that in order to export descriptions and comments, you need to enable the corresponding options on the Download page:
Multilingual Excel
Multilingual Excel format allows you to upload a single file containing translations for multiple languages.
File format
Your multilingual Excel file should follow the following requirements:
The first row must be a header containing the following fields:
key(required),locale_code1,locale_code2,locale_codeN(at least two locale codes have to be provided),description(optional),comments(optional).Subsequent rows contain the actual key data. One row — one key.
So, here is an example of a valid multilingual Excel file:
It contains two keys:
countryandpassword.There are translations for three languages: English, German, and French.
Each key has a description and a comment (remember that these fields are optional).
Uploading file
After preparing a multilingual Excel file, you can proceed to the Upload page and start the importing process as usual.
After the file is selected, you will be presented with the following dialog:
Using these dropdowns you can specify what data a specific column contains or ignore the given column altogether:
It is also possible to adjust languages by clicking on the locales dropdowns:
After you are done, click Apply. You should see a single file with all the locales it contains:
After the upload is finished, you can check detailed information by accessing the Activity page:
Downloading file
To download translations in multilingual Excel format, proceed to the Download page and choose Multilingual Excel from the Format dropdown:
This format belongs to the Other platform therefore make sure that your translation keys are assigned to this format:
You can learn more about keys and platforms in the corresponding article.
All translation keys assigned to the same Excel file will be exported in a single file with the proper name. All other keys that are not assigned to any file will be placed inside the no_filename.xlsx file.
Please remember that in order to export descriptions and comments, you need to enable the corresponding options on the Download page:
Note on skipped translations
Suppose you have a translation key welcome with English, French, and Latvian values. English and Latvian values are verified whereas the French translation is marked as unverified:
Then you export this key in multilingual Excel format and choose to omit all unverified translations. The resulting file will have the following contents:
Note the gray background for the French translation (the color code is #f3f3f3). This special formatting means that the French translation was omitted but still has some value in the project; in other words, it is not empty. If you import this multilingual Excel file back to your project, the French translation won't be overwritten with an empty value.
If, however, you remove the gray background and try to import the following file:
Then the French translation value will be treated as empty. It means that the corresponding value in your project will be set to Empty:
Therefore, be careful not to remove the gray background if you don't wish to nullify translation values upon importing the file.