How to Convert Excel 97–03 to JSON in Python

APIs are great for abstracting away data conversions — especially for old data formats like Excel 97–03.

Using complementary Python code examples, we can easily take advantage of a free API to convert our Excel 97–03 documents into JSON format.

We first need to install the SDK with pip install:

pip install cloudmersive-convert-api-client

Then we can add the below imports and call the function (using our Excel 97–03 file path to make the conversion):

from __future__ import print_function
import time
import cloudmersive_convert_api_client
from cloudmersive_convert_api_client.rest import ApiException
from pprint import pprint

# Configure API key authorization: Apikey
configuration = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.Configuration()
configuration.api_key['Apikey'] = 'YOUR_API_KEY'



# create an instance of the API class
api_instance = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.ConvertDataApi(cloudmersive_convert_api_client.ApiClient(configuration))
input_file = '/path/to/inputfile' # file | Input file to perform the operation on.

try:
    # Convert Excel (97-2003) XLS to JSON conversion
    api_response = api_instance.convert_data_xls_to_json(input_file)
    pprint(api_response)
except ApiException as e:
    print("Exception when calling ConvertDataApi->convert_data_xls_to_json: %s\n" % e)

To authenticate our free API calls, we’ll just need a free Cloudmersive API key. These allow a limit of 800 API calls per month with no commitments.

Just like that, we’re all done — we only needed a little Python code to make our Excel 97–03 to JSON conversion.