Excel

The clipboard interchange format between spreadsheet apps is tab-separated values. Copy a range in Excel and TSV is what's on your clipboard — one paste away from being a .tsvt.

Out of Excel, into a sheet

Select a range in Excel, copy it, and paste the clipboard into a file — the grid arrives tab-separated, already a valid .tsvt:

pbpaste > budget.tsvt          # macOS; Linux: xclip -o -selection clipboard / wl-paste
tsv check budget.tsvt

On Windows, powershell Get-Clipboard > budget.tsvt does the same.

What travels is the computed values — spreadsheet clipboards carry results, not formulas. Re-express the ones you want to keep as =formulas in A1 notation, and from then on the sheet computes, diffs, and versions as text.

Out of a sheet, into Excel

The reverse paste works because Excel parses clipboard TSV back into cells. Render a sheet onto the clipboard and paste into any worksheet — it lands as a proper grid, one value per cell:

tsv render grades.tsvt | pbcopy          # then ⌘V in Excel

Through files

For file-based workflows, render speaks CSV directly and Excel opens it double-click clean:

$ tsv render --format csv grades.tsvt
Student,Math,Reading,Science,Average,Result
Alice,85,90,78,84.3,Pass

Going the other way, save any worksheet as Text (Tab delimited) and the result is a formula-free .tsvt, ready for tsv tui or the playground.