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A spreadsheet file describes a method of storing two dimensional data such as a worksheet or a spreadsheet. Each row contains data for one record and the columns have headers in the first row that identify the contents of each column.
A spreadsheet file can be:
•A CSV file
•A worksheet in an Excel (or OpenXML) file with headers in the first row and records in the remaining rows
•A single table (tier or level) from an XML file
A CSV data file is normally a UTF-8 (Unicode) CSV file.
The name CSV means "Comma Separated Value" although some countries do not always use a comma to separate the columns and for UTF-16 Unicode files the tab character is recommended.
Spreadsheet files have many uses:
•A convenient way to store data from a project, in this case the columns are the questions and the rows are the answers for each respondent with the serial number in the first column; the headers are the question (entry) names with "Serial" as the header for the first column
•A convenient way to store lists from the program, in this case the columns and rows will depend on the output
•Spreadsheet data can be copied to, and pasted from, the clipboard, in this case a tab character is normally used as the delimiter
•Spreadsheet files can be read by most spreadsheet and database programs
•Various types of Merge files can be used to update records
A more detailed description of the way CSV files are stored can be found in the Reference Manual, Files, CSV files.
Spreadsheet files can be viewed, edited, sorted, reordered, and selected parts copied (extracted):