Excel (XLSX) Export

TableCrafter exports your table to a genuine OOXML .xlsx workbook assembled server-side with PHP's ZipArchive — a real spreadsheet that opens natively in Excel, Google Sheets, and LibreOffice, never a CSV or HTML file renamed to .xlsx.

Overview

When a visitor picks Excel from a table's export menu, the browser sends the currently displayed rows and column configuration to WordPress over AJAX. The plugin's export handler (includes/class-tc-export-handler.php) builds a valid OOXML package on disk, stores it in a protected uploads directory, and returns a one-time download link. The result is a true .xlsx workbook with the correct MIME type application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet.

Two key implementation details make this honest:

• The workbook is produced with ZipArchive, writing the same internal parts a copy of Excel itself writes — not a tab-separated text dump.
• The frontend label excel is treated as an alias and normalized to the canonical format key xlsx before generation, so a single export pipeline produces every format.

Enabling export on a table

Excel export rides on the same export switch as CSV and PDF. Add the export attribute to the [tablecrafter] shortcode:

<!-- Minimal: enable the export menu (CSV / Excel / PDF) -->
[tablecrafter source="https://example.com/sales.csv" export="true"]

A richer table that searches, paginates, and exports the filtered view:

[tablecrafter
  source="https://example.com/q3-orders.csv"
  search="true"
  filters="true"
  export="true"
  per_page="25"
  sort="total:desc"]

In the block editor, the same control is exposed as the Enable Export Tools toggle on the TableCrafter (Data Table) block, which sets the data-export attribute the frontend reads.

Shortcode attributes relevant to export

Using the export menu

With export="true", TableCrafter renders an export control group (.tc-export-controls) above the table. When more than one format is available, the controls render as a dropdown:

• .tc-export-dropdown-wrapper — the container.
• .tc-export-main-btn — the "Export Data ▼" trigger button.
• .tc-export-dropdown — the menu, hidden until the trigger is clicked and closed on any outside click.
• .tc-export-option.tc-export-excel — the Excel choice, shown with a 📊 icon and the label "Excel - Advanced spreadsheet with formatting".

Choosing Excel triggers a loading overlay (.tc-export-loading, "Generating EXCEL export..."), then the file downloads automatically and a success notification reports the file size.

What's inside the .xlsx file

The handler builds a minimal-but-valid OOXML package. Each part below is added to the ZIP with ZipArchive::addFromString():

Cells are written as inline strings (t="inlineStr" with <is><t>), and every value is HTML-escaped, so commas, quotes, and Unicode survive intact without the encoding surprises that plague CSV. Cell references use proper spreadsheet addressing (A1, B1, ... AA1) generated from the column index.

<!-- Shape of xl/worksheets/sheet1.xml (abbreviated) -->
<worksheet xmlns="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/spreadsheetml/2006/main">
  <sheetData>
    <row r="1">
      <c r="A1" t="inlineStr"><is><t>Product</t></is></c>
      <c r="B1" t="inlineStr"><is><t>Total</t></is></c>
    </row>
    <row r="2">
      <c r="A2" t="inlineStr"><is><t>Widget</t></is></c>
      <c r="B2" t="inlineStr"><is><t>42.00</t></is></c>
    </row>
  </sheetData>
</worksheet>

What gets exported: rows, columns, and formatting

The Excel export honors the table's live state rather than re-fetching the raw source:

• Filtered & searched rows. Because exportFiltered is on by default, only rows matching the current search and filters are written to the workbook.
• Visible columns. Columns are taken from the table's column config; any column flagged exportable: false is omitted from the file.
• Cleaned values. Each cell is normalized server-side: HTML tags are stripped, date-looking strings are reformatted to the template's date_format, and numeric values are formatted via number_format. Arrays are JSON-encoded.

Export templates control the formatting and optional metadata. They are filterable, so you can register your own:

// Add a custom export template (e.g. in your theme functions.php)
add_filter('tc_export_templates', function ($templates) {
    $templates['finance'] = [
        'name'             => 'Finance Report',
        'include_metadata' => true,
        'date_format'      => 'M j, Y',
        'number_format'    => '$0.00',
    ];
    return $templates;
});

Built-in templates are default, business (adds a metadata footer with generation time and record count), and data_analysis (ISO-8601 dates, high-precision numbers).

Opening the file in Excel and Sheets

• Microsoft Excel (desktop or web): double-click the downloaded .xlsx. It opens directly to the "TableCrafter Export" sheet with no import wizard and no "this file's format doesn't match its extension" warning, because the bytes are real OOXML.
• Google Sheets: use File → Import (or drag into Drive). Sheets recognizes the workbook and converts it; choose "Replace spreadsheet" or "Insert new sheet" as needed.
• LibreOffice / Numbers: open normally — both read the standard .spreadsheetml format.

How the download is delivered and secured

Excel export is a two-step AJAX round trip, both endpoints nonce-protected:

1. The browser POSTs the rows, columns, filename, and options to admin-ajax.php with action=tc_export_data, guarded by the tc_export_nonce and a read capability check. The handler builds the .xlsx, stores the result in a transient (tc_export_*) for five minutes, and returns a one-time download_url.
2. Clicking that URL hits action=tc_download_export (guarded by tc_download_nonce), which streams the file with the correct Content-Type and Content-Disposition: attachment headers, then deletes both the temp file and the transient.

Generated files live in a protected directory, wp-content/uploads/tablecrafter-exports/, created on demand with an .htaccess "deny all" rule and a silent index.php so they can't be browsed directly. Filenames are prefixed tc_export_ with a UUID. Stale files are purged after download and, as a backstop, a cleanup routine removes any export older than an hour.

Hooking into the export

On the JavaScript side, the onExport callback fires after a successful Excel download, receiving the format, the exported data and columns, the resolved filename, and the byte size — useful for analytics or post-export UI:

new TableCrafter('#my-table', {
  data: 'https://example.com/orders.csv',
  exportable: true,
  onExport: (e) => {
    // e.format === 'excel', plus e.filename, e.size, e.data, e.columns
    console.log('Exported', e.filename, e.size);
  }
});

Next steps

For the lighter, header-row-and-rows format see export-csv.html, and for a paginated print-ready document see export-pdf.html.