Excel to Markdown Converter

What it does

When your agent uses it

• A user attaches an .xlsx file and asks for a summary or specific values
• Comparing or analyzing several workbooks kept in one folder
• Reviewing a budget, tracker or data export saved as a spreadsheet

Example prompts

• “Summarize the Q3 budget in ./finance/budget.xlsx and list the largest line items.”
• “Convert every workbook in ./exports to Markdown and tell me which sheets are empty.”
• “Pull the EMEA rows out of sales-tracker.xlsx.”

Requirements

• Python 3 with pip and the markitdown package

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 727ff2e. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

• Tool permissions

  Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

  From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

• Runs code

  Ships 2 files in scripts/ (Python), which the agent can run.

  Shell commands in SKILL.md call:

  • python

  From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

• Network

  No URLs in SKILL.md.

  From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

• Credentials

  Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

  From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Excel to Markdown Converter loads about 1.7k tokens when it runs, and up to ~2.4k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 237 tokens; SKILL.md has 765 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it

~237

When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches

~1.7k

With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them

~2.4k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); the scripts in this folder are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from github/awesome-copilot at commit 727ff2e, republished under its MIT licence (© github). 765 words, ~1,685 tokens.

name

convert-excel-to-md

description

Converts Excel (.xlsx) workbooks into Markdown so their contents can be accurately analyzed, summarized, searched, or extracted from. Use this skill whenever the user shares, references, or asks about a .xlsx file — even if they don't say "convert" or "markdown" explicitly. This includes requests to "read", "summarize", "review", "extract data from", "compare", "chart", or "analyze" a spreadsheet, workbook, budget, data export, or tracker. Always run the bundled conversion script to produce Markdown first; do not attempt to parse .xlsx content directly or write ad-hoc extraction code. Also use this skill for batch requests involving a whole folder of Excel workbooks. IMPORTANT: When the user references a folder or set of documents containing multiple file types (.pdf, .docx, .xlsx), invoke ALL three sibling skills — convert-pdf-to-md, convert-word-to-md, and convert-excel-to-md — so no file type is silently skipped.

<name>/
    img/
        sheet001_<sheetname>_img001.<ext>
        sheet002_<sheetname>_img001.<ext>
        ...
    <name>.md          (each sheet's images appear right after its table,
                         under a "#### Images in this sheet" heading)

python scripts\convert_excel_to_md.py "C:\path\to\workbook.xlsx"

python scripts\convert_excel_to_md.py "C:\path\to\workbook.xlsx" -o "C:\path\to\output_folder"

python scripts\convert_excel_to_md.py "C:\path\to\folder"

python scripts\convert_excel_to_md.py "C:\path\to\folder" --recursive

© github, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 3 other files (scripts, references) in skills/convert-excel-to-md of github/awesome-copilot.

• SKILL.md
• references/setup.md
• scripts/convert_excel_to_md.py
• scripts/requirements.txt

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 727ff2e