That an Excel File (.xlsx) Is Just A Zip File

How Did I End Up Inside An Excel File?

Well, I am a Java Developer for some time now and I am working on a project that involves reading an Excel file. I’ve been using Apache POI and I am encountering problems loading large files. After a few hours of research, I ended up with recommendations of streaming the file and reading it as XML. That’s right, an XML!

The Zip File

Reading a lot, even comments to answers, I discovered that .xlsx is just a zip file that contains lots of XML files inside. So one way of overcoming the error that I always encounter is to read it as XML file.

I’d be doing another post to detail what I did when I solve this. For the mean time that’s it, an Excel file is just a ZIP file of XML files.