xleak

Expose Excel files in your terminal - no Microsoft Excel required!

Inspired by doxx, xleak brings Excel spreadsheets to your command line with beautiful rendering, powerful export capabilities, and a feature-rich interactive TUI.

Features

Core Functionality

• Beautiful terminal rendering with formatted tables
• Interactive TUI mode - full keyboard navigation with ratatui
• Smart data type handling - numbers right-aligned, text left-aligned, booleans centered
• Multi-sheet support - seamlessly navigate between sheets (Tab/Shift+Tab)
• Multiple export formats - CSV, JSON, plain text
• Blazing fast - powered by calamine, the fastest Excel parser in Rust
• Multiple file formats - supports .xlsx, .xls, .xlsm, .xlsb, .ods

Interactive TUI Features

• Full-text search - search across all cells with /, navigate with n/N
• Clipboard support - copy cells (c) or entire rows (C) to clipboard
• Formula display - view Excel formulas in cell detail view (Enter key)
• Jump to row/column - press Ctrl+G to jump to any cell (e.g., A100, 500, 10,5)
• Large file optimization - lazy loading for files with 1000+ rows
• Progress indicators - real-time feedback for long operations
• Visual cell highlighting - current row, column, and cell clearly marked

Installation

# Install from source
git clone <your-repo-url>
cd xleak
cargo install --path .

Usage

Interactive TUI Mode (Recommended)

# Launch interactive viewer
xleak quarterly-report.xlsx -i

# Start on a specific sheet
xleak report.xlsx --sheet "Q3 Results" -i

# View formulas by default
xleak data.xlsx -i --formulas

TUI Keyboard Shortcuts:

• ↑ ↓ ← → - Navigate cells
• Enter - View cell details (including formulas)
• / - Search across all cells
• n / N - Jump to next/previous search result
• Ctrl+G - Jump to specific row/cell (e.g., 100, A50, 10,5)
• c - Copy current cell to clipboard
• C - Copy entire row to clipboard
• Tab / Shift+Tab - Switch between sheets
• ? - Show help
• q - Quit

Non-Interactive Mode

View a spreadsheet

xleak quarterly-report.xlsx

View a specific sheet

# By name
xleak report.xlsx --sheet "Q3 Results"

# By index (1-based)
xleak report.xlsx --sheet 2

Limit displayed rows

# Show only first 20 rows
xleak large-file.xlsx -n 20

# Show all rows
xleak file.xlsx -n 0

Export data

# Export to CSV
xleak data.xlsx --export csv > output.csv

# Export to JSON
xleak data.xlsx --export json > output.json

# Export as plain text (tab-separated)
xleak data.xlsx --export text > output.txt

Combine options

# Export specific sheet as CSV
xleak workbook.xlsx --sheet "Sales" --export csv > sales.csv

Examples

# Launch interactive viewer
xleak quarterly-report.xlsx -i

# Quick preview in non-interactive mode
xleak quarterly-report.xlsx

# See specific sheet with limited rows
xleak financial-data.xlsx --sheet "Summary" -n 10

# Interactive mode with formulas visible
xleak data.xlsx -i --formulas

# Export all data from a sheet
xleak survey-results.xlsx --sheet "Responses" --export csv -n 0

Performance

xleak is optimized for both small and large files:

• Small files (< 1000 rows): Instant loading with full eager loading
• Large files (≥ 1000 rows): Automatic lazy loading with row caching
  • Memory usage: ~400KB for 10,000 row files
  • Loads only visible rows on demand
  • Progress indicators for long operations

Comparison to Alternatives

Related Projects

Looking to view Word documents in the terminal? Check out doxx - a terminal viewer for .docx files with similar TUI capabilities.

Built With

• Rust - for performance and reliability
• calamine - the fastest Excel/ODS parser
• ratatui - terminal user interface framework
• prettytable-rs - beautiful terminal tables
• clap - elegant CLI argument parsing
• arboard - cross-platform clipboard support

License

MIT

Credits

• Inspired by doxx by bgreenwell
• Powered by calamine