Migrating from Microsoft Excel to MySQL

Do I need to migrate to MySQL?

If your MS Excel spreadsheet becomes large and complicated and it is mostly used as a data storage, you may think about migrating to database. There are lot of database engines on today's market: Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, Sybase, etc. But among all of them MySQL has become the world's most popular database because of high performance, cross-Platforming, multiple users access, strong security system and much more. So, it is wise decision to migrate Excel data to MySQL if you are constructing scalable, flexible and affordable data system.

However, if your primary use of Microsoft Excel is for calculating formulas and drawing charts or workbooks are not formatted as tables (many merged cells, several tables on a single workbook, etc), there will be more pain than benefits in migrating data to MySQL server.

Migration Strategies

There is the standard way to migrate Microsoft Excel data to MySQL server. Export data from MS Excel spreadsheet as TXT or CSV, then create empty MySQL table with the appripriate structure and use "LOAD DATA" MySQL command.

Is this method good for you? If you are an experienced programmer or database administrator, the answer is "yes". Just remember that you will need to define all types in the destination table manually. While MS Excel supports Unicode by defaylt, MySQL does not so tightly bind character sets to field types. Instead it allows each text field to be bound to any number of character sets, including Unicode. Again, you will have to specify it manually if you need to support Unicode in the resulting MySQL database.

Benefits of using Excel-to-MySQL converter