I need to convert an .xls file to text, i dont need it formatted in any way. The file is filled with productids like PN-5098P, which i will preg_match_all to get.
What is the simplest solution? I tried simply opening the file in a regular texteditor, the ids are not showing, so i guess i need some kind of binary converter?
XLS is a complex proprietary format, and it might be difficult to work with. If you end up having trouble with libraries like Clint suggested, consider only accepting files in a more simpler format, like CSV, which is super-duper easy to deal with. If that solution is acceptable in this situation, it'll end up making your life much easier.
Newer versions of MS Office can output your spreadsheet directly in XML format. Here's an example of using such an XML-format spreadsheet directly from PHP:
Otherwise, I've heard good things about PHPExcel:
Here's one other link that might at least give you some additional ideas:
I convert my Excel sheets to MySQL using xls2mysql.com, but it isn't perfect. It doesn't recognize characters like -, /, é, ü, ô etc.. I've been working around this by converting those characters to a number in between hash tags (#4# for -) and unconverting them afterwards, but it is a bit of a hassle.
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8128616/how-can-i-read-xls-files-excel-with-php