Excel Lite

Excel Lite

A lightweight, fully-featured spreadsheet plugin for Obsidian, powered by Univer.

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✨ Features

Core

• Full spreadsheet editor — Create and edit multi-sheet workbooks with a familiar Excel-like interface
• Formula engine — SUM, AVERAGE, IF, VLOOKUP and hundreds more — works with references across sheets
• Cell formatting — Number formats, fonts, colors, borders, alignment, merge cells, freeze panes
• Sorting & filtering — Flexible row/column sorting and data filter dropdowns
• Hyperlinks & notes — Clickable links, cell comments and collaborative thread comments

Import / Export

• Import .xlsx / .xls (Excel 97-2003) / .csv files directly into Obsidian
• Export your workbook back to .xlsx, .xls or .csv
• Dropdown selector — One Import button and one Export button, pick a format from the menu
• Embed links — Reference Obsidian notes as embedded content inside cells

Mobile

• Preview mode (default) — Read-only view, no keyboard popup, optimized scrolling
• Edit mode — Full editing with toolbar, sheet tabs and cell input
• One-tap toggle — Switch via the book/pencil icon in the top-right corner
• Sheet position memory — Active sheet is preserved when switching modes

Integration

• .sheet.md files — Workbooks are stored as plain Markdown files with structured JSON data blocks
• Frontmatter auto-detection — Any Markdown file with obsidian-excel: parsed frontmatter opens in Sheet View
• Ribbon & commands — Create new sheets from the ribbon icon, command palette or file context menu
• Dark mode — Automatically follows Obsidian's theme setting
• Auto-save — Changes persist automatically after 5 seconds of inactivity

🚀 Installation

1. Download the latest release from Releases
2. Extract to your vault's .obsidian/plugins/obsidian-excel-lite/ folder
3. Reload Obsidian (or enable the plugin in Settings → Community plugins)

Or build from source:

cd your-vault/.obsidian/plugins/
git clone https://github.com/nightfall-yl/obsidian-excel-lite.git
cd obsidian-excel-lite
npm install
npm run build

📖 Usage

Create a new sheet

• Click the spreadsheet icon in the left ribbon
• Use command palette (Ctrl/Cmd + P) → "Create new spreadsheet"
• Right-click any folder → "Create new spreadsheet"

Import / Export

Open a sheet, then use the two dropdown buttons in the toolbar:

Mobile mode

Use the book / pencil icon in the top-right corner to switch between preview (read-only) and edit (full-featured) modes.

🗂 File Format

Sheets are plain-text Markdown files — friendly to Git and grep:

---
obsidian-excel: parsed
---

```sheet
{ ... Univer workbook JSON ... }

## 🔧 Tech Stack

| Component | Technology |
|-----------|-----------|
| Spreadsheet engine | [Univer](https://univer.ai) 0.25.x |
| XLS/XLSX/CSV I/O | [SheetJS (`@stackline/xlsx`)](https://sheetjs.com) |
| Build | Vite |
| Language | TypeScript |

## 🧪 Development

```bash
npm install        # install dependencies
npm run build      # production build
npm run dev        # watch mode (for development)
npm test           # run unit tests

Build output: main.js, manifest.json, styles.css (copied to project root).

🙏 Credits

• Univer — the underlying spreadsheet engine
• SheetJS — XLSX/XLS/CSV import/export
• Obsidian — the note-taking app that makes this possible

📄 License

MIT