Excel Splitter
Split a workbook into one file per worksheet. Choose tabs, download a ZIP, and keep the entire process inside your browser.
Drop your file here or click to upload
Supports .xlsx, .xls, .xlsm, .xlsb · up to 50MB · or paste a file from your clipboard
How to Split Excel Sheets into Separate Files
- Upload your workbook - .xlsx, .xlsm, .xls and .xlsb are all read locally; nothing is uploaded.
- Select sheets - every tab is ticked to begin with, and each one shows the size of its used range so you can see which tabs actually hold data.
- Download ZIP - each selected worksheet is written as its own .xlsx and the whole set arrives as one ZIP.
What the Splitter Does to Each Sheet
The workbook is parsed once, and every selected tab is copied into a brand new single-sheet workbook. The copy carries the cells - values, formulas and merged ranges - and the sheet keeps its original tab name, trimmed to Excel's 31-character limit. Because each file is written fresh rather than carved out of the original package, the presentation layer does not travel with it: cell formatting, column widths, charts, images, pivot tables, conditional formatting and defined names are not written to the output, and macros are dropped when an .xlsm is split.
That is the trade worth knowing before you split a formatted report. For a data tab it is exactly what you want - a clean file per dataset. For a designed dashboard, expect a plain grid of the values and formulas rather than a copy of the sheet as it looks on screen.
Cross-Sheet Formulas Are the One Real Gotcha
Splitting breaks any formula that reached across tabs. A formula like =Summary!B4is copied verbatim into the new file, but the Summary sheet is no longer in that workbook, so Excel resolves it to a reference error the moment it recalculates. If your tabs are linked, copy the sheet and use Paste Special → Values in Excel before splitting, or split first and then repair the handful of cells that depend on the other tabs.
Edge Cases and Limits
- Worksheet level only - a sheet is never divided; the unit is always one tab per file.
- Hidden sheets are listed and split like any other tab, and come out visible.
- Empty tabs show 0 rows, 0 columns in the picker. Untick them to keep the ZIP tidy.
- Duplicate output names can occur when two tabs differ only by characters the filename rules strip, for example "Q1 (EMEA)" and "Q1 EMEA". Rename one tab before splitting.
- Everything is written as .xlsx, including files split out of .xls, .xlsb and .xlsm sources.
- Memory bound - the source workbook, the generated files and the ZIP are all held in the browser at once.
When to Use a Different Tool
If the split you want is inside one sheet rather than across tabs - one file per branch, per client, per month - use Split Excel by Column, which groups rows by the values in a column. To cut a sheet down before splitting, Filter Excel Rows and Excel Column Extractor trim rows and columns first. Going the other way, Excel Merge puts separate workbooks back together, and Excel to CSV exports each sheet as text when the recipient does not need a workbook at all.
Frequently Asked Questions
Not on this page. This splitter works at the worksheet level: one selected tab in, one .xlsx out. To break a single sheet into files by the values in a column (one file per region, per customer, per month), use the Split Excel by Column tool instead.
Each file is named after the source workbook and the sheet it holds - sales-2026.xlsx with a Q1 tab produces sales-2026-q1.xlsx - and they arrive together in a ZIP called sales-2026-split-sheets.zip. Names are lowercased and anything outside letters, digits, dot, dash and underscore becomes a dash, so a tab called 'Q1 / EMEA' lands as ...-q1-emea.xlsx. The sheet name inside each file keeps its original spelling.
Formulas are copied across as formulas, but they lose whatever they referenced on the tabs that stayed behind. A SUM within the same sheet keeps working; a lookup into another tab now has nothing to resolve against and reports a reference error when Excel recalculates. If the tabs are linked, convert the formulas to values before splitting.
Cell values, formulas and merged ranges come through. Cell formatting, column widths, charts, images, pivot tables, conditional formatting, data validation and defined names do not - each output is written fresh as a plain .xlsx, and a macro-enabled .xlsm is split into macro-free .xlsx files.
Yes - .xls, .xlsm and .xlsb are read as well as .xlsx, and every output file is written as .xlsx regardless of what went in. That makes the splitter a quick way to modernise a legacy workbook and separate its tabs in one pass.
There is no size limit in the tool, but the whole workbook, every generated file, and the ZIP all sit in your browser's memory at once. On a very large workbook, select a few sheets at a time rather than all of them.