Frequently asked questions
Answers to the questions people ask us most often.
- Are my files sent anywhere?
- No. Your browser reads and transforms them in the tab's memory. The page's security policy forbids any connection to another domain, and you can check it by turning off the network: everything keeps working. How to check.
- Is it really free?
- Yes, completely, with no account and no file limit. The only thing for sale is the licence to install Klargrid on your own network. On your intranet.
- Do I need Excel?
- No. Klargrid reads and writes Excel files itself. A recent browser is enough, on Windows, macOS, Linux or a tablet.
- Which formats are supported?
- Excel 2007 and later workbooks (.xlsx, .xlsm), OpenDocument spreadsheets (.ods), CSV and text files in all common encodings, and JSON. Old .xls files (Excel 97-2003) are read for their values by the data tools; to repair or slim down a workbook, an .xlsx is needed.
- Does my repaired workbook keep its charts and macros?
- Yes. The workbook tools (health check, slim down, links, clean) rewrite only the parts they fix; everything else, charts, macros, pivot tables, validations, comes out unchanged. Only cleaning before sending removes macros, and only if you ask.
- Why is my Excel file so large?
- Usually not because of its data: formatting applied to whole columns stretches the used range to a million rows, styles copied between workbooks pile up by the thousand, and every paste duplicates conditional formatting rules. The health check measures each of these causes, and Slim down a workbook removes them.
- Excel says "Too many different cell formats": what can I do?
- The workbook has hit the limit of about 64,000 cell formats, almost always because of duplicates. Slim down a workbook merges identical formats and removes those no cell uses, without changing how a single cell looks.
- My CSV shows "é" instead of "é": how do I fix it?
- The file was saved as UTF-8 and then read as Windows-1252. Fix a CSV file recognises the mix-up, repairs every character and produces a CSV Excel opens correctly, or an XLSX.
- How many rows can I open?
- Excel stops at 1,048,576 rows. Open a large file reads a CSV from your disk in chunks: several gigabytes and tens of millions of rows can be browsed, filtered and exported.
- My workbook has a password: can I use it?
- Yes, if you know the password. Drop the workbook and type the password: it is decrypted in the tab (AES, as in Excel), and the password is neither sent nor kept. Several workbooks protected by the same password open in one go. The file produced is no longer protected: protect it again in Excel if needed. Nothing is guessed or forced.
- I do the same cleanup every month: can it be automated?
- Yes, with no macro. Chain cleaning steps saves the steps in a routine, which your browser keeps and opens again in one click next month, or which you apply at once to all of the month's files, or to a whole folder. For the workbooks themselves (formulas to values, links, cleanup before sharing), Batch-process workbooks does the same.
- Is Klargrid related to Microsoft?
- No. Klargrid is not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft. Excel is a Microsoft trademark; the word here refers to the files the tool can read.
- Does Klargrid work offline?
- Yes. After a first visit to a tool, the browser keeps the code of every tool and the pages of your language: you can cut the network and keep working, switching tools included. It is also the simplest way to check that nothing leaves.
- Can we install it on our network?
- Yes. The same site can be copied onto an internal server and works with no Internet access. Klargrid on your intranet.