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Excel files listed as supported but they are not #428
Description
The register of file types lists Excel files as being supported by FileIO but they are not supported, and have not been for quite a few years. A fix is available but hasn't been adopted. I suggest either:
- dropping support for Excel files altogether
- adopting the fix offered
- suggesting revisions to the proposed fix to bring it to required standards and then adopting
Activity
TimG1964 commentedon May 30, 2026
I wonder if there is, in fact, any desire to retain Excel support in
FileIO.jl. If anyone wants to answer in the negative, I'll be happy to make an immediate PR to remove support. I don't really like having an unfulfilled promise to users (ie that FileIO supports Excel) made in the FileIO docs.SimonDanisch commentedon May 31, 2026
I'd like to have it in FileIO
TimG1964 commentedon May 31, 2026
Hi @SimonDanisch,
Thanks for this reply. ❤️
Unless I've misunderstood something, restoring Excel functionality to FileIO requires some changes to ExcelFiles. I've made two PRs to ExcelFiles but have had no response in six months. I will shortly make a further PR, further simplifying ExcelFiles to a brief 30 lines of code (+ docs) with dependencies on only FileIO and XLSX. Are you able to help prompt a merge?
An alternative approach (not my preference) might be to drop ExcelFiles and either just use XLSX through a small package extension, or to repackage my PR on ExcelFiles as a new, independent package (name tbc - ExcelIO?) - perhaps under the JuliaIO org - and adopt that instead.
I'd welcome your guidance...
Thanks,
Tim
SimonDanisch commentedon Jun 1, 2026
Could we just make a package extension in XLSX? ExcelFiles doesn't seem to be actively maintained anymore...
TimG1964 commentedon Jun 1, 2026
Yes, if that is preferred. I actually have one prepared already. The only issue is related to documentation, because the FileIO element gets somewhat lost in the overall XLSX docs but is intended to be an "easy" route to accessing .xlsx files. I'll give that a bit of thought and see what I can come up with. Functionally, everything is already there, so it is only a small step.