Export a response as Excel

User

When an answer contains tables, you can save them as an Excel workbook (.xlsx) — with the figures as real numbers you can calculate with straight away, instead of retyping them out of the chat.

Why don’t I see “Excel”?

Because the answer contains no table. Excel (.xlsx) appears in the format picker only when the text holds at least one table — without one you would get a workbook containing nothing but the header data, which reads like a broken export.

What counts is a Markdown table: a header row with the dashed delimiter row (|---|---|) directly below it. A lone pipe character in the body text or a horizontal rule is not enough.

Two consequences you will notice in practice:

The picker follows the content. Open the dialog on an answer without a table while Excel was your last choice, and the format falls back to the default. So you cannot accidentally export an empty workbook.
If you edit the text in the Content tab and remove the last table, the Excel export no longer makes sense — the option is gone the next time you open the dialog.

Step by step

Open Export — hover over the answer and click Export in the answer toolbar. The same route works on a knowledge base article.
Choose a format — select Excel (.xlsx). If the format is not in the list, the text contains no table (see above).
Polish (optional) — in the Content tab you can review and adjust the text beforehand, exactly as with the Word export.
Add metadata — title, version and confidentiality level; they land on the first sheet.
Export — the workbook is generated and downloaded.

What is in the workbook

A leading information sheet — question, title, subtitle, author, timestamp, version and classification, the same details that fill the Word template. Fields you left empty are omitted. All values stay text, so a version like 1.0 does not turn into the number 1.
One sheet per table, in document order. A sheet is named after the heading immediately above it. A heading names exactly one table — a second table below it is named after its position in the document instead. Identical names get a number appended.
The header row is bold and frozen; it stays put as you scroll. Header cells always stay text, because a column header 2026 is a label, not a measurement.
Rows of unequal length are padded out to the widest row — a ragged table does not bring the export down.

Figures arrive as numbers

Cell values are read in German notation, the notation the answers are written in: the comma is the decimal separator, the dot groups thousands. What is recognised is written as a real number with a matching number format, not as text:

In the answer	In the cell	Number format
`1.234,56 €`	`1234.56`	`#,##0.00 "€"`
`€ 1.234,56`	`1234.56`	`#,##0.00 "€"`
`1.234,56`	`1234.56`	`#,##0.00`
`1.234`	`1234`	`#,##0`
`12 %`	`0.12`	`0 %`
`7,5 %`	`0.075`	`0.00 %`
`-42`	`-42`	`0`

CHF, EUR, USD, €, $ and £ are recognised — written before the figure or after it.

Worth knowing if your answers are written in English notation: 1,234.56 is not recognised and stays text, and 1,234 is read as one point two three four. Where that matters, check the column after the export.

What deliberately stays text

When in doubt the export produces text rather than a wrongly guessed number, because a wrongly guessed number is the kind of error nobody spots. Among the things that stay text:

1.2.3 · ABC-100 · 2026-08 · 31.12.2026 · 12 Stück · 1,2,3

Dates are not converted into Excel date values. If you want to calculate with dates, convert the column in Excel yourself.

Limits

What is exported are values, not formulas.
Only tables make it into the workbook. Body text, lists and images of the answer stay out — for those use Word or PDF.
Formatting is limited to bold and number format: no colours, no borders, no set column widths.
Markup inside cells (**bold**, links) arrives as plain text; a link’s target is dropped.
There is no company template for Excel — unlike Word and PowerPoint, the workbook always comes out the same way.
Building the workbook is deterministic: no model call, no additional route out to the network. The AI preparation of the text and the PII shield apply unchanged.

Not to be confused with the “Create spreadsheet” tool

The assistant can produce an Excel file by itself during a conversation (CreateSpreadsheet). That is something other than this export:

	Excel export	”Create spreadsheet” tool
Triggered by	you, via the export dialog	the language model, in the conversation
Content	exactly the tables you can see	a workbook the model puts together
Result	deterministic and repeatable	different from run to run
Available	chat and knowledge base	chat only, and off by default in the web edition

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