How to open JSON data in Excel

Published: October 7, 2026

When a developer says “I’ll send it as JSON”, or an export from some service arrives as a .json file, it can look intimidating. JSON is designed for programs exchanging data — but as an Excel table, anyone can read it.

What JSON looks like

[
  { "name": "Ann", "team": "Sales", "deals": 120 },
  { "name": "Ben", "team": "Marketing", "deals": 95 }
]

[ ] is a list, { } is one record (an object).
Each record pairs keys with values, like "name": "Ann".

This example is a list of two people. In Excel it becomes:

name	team	deals
Ann	Sales	120
Ben	Marketing	95

Keys become column headers; each object becomes a row.

How to convert

Drop the .json file into the JSON to XLSX converter.
Click Convert and download the .xlsx file.
Open it in Excel and sort, filter, build pivot tables or charts.

The file is processed in your browser, so customer lists and sales data never leave your computer.

Supported JSON shapes

JSON shape	Excel result
List of objects `[{…}, {…}]`	Keys become headers, one row per object
List of arrays `[[…], […]]`	One row per array
List of values `["a", "b"]`	A single column
A single object `{…}`	A one-row table
Object whose values are all lists `{"orders": […], "items": […]}`	One sheet per key

Objects don’t need identical keys: every key that appears anywhere becomes a column, and missing values are left empty.

What about nested data?

{ "name": "Ann", "tags": ["admin", "dev"], "address": { "city": "London" } }

When a value contains another list or object, like tags or address, it’s stored in the cell as JSON text so nothing is lost — the tags cell contains ["admin","dev"]. Use Excel’s Text to Columns if you want to split such cells further.

Need CSV instead?

To feed another program, use JSON to CSV. By default it writes UTF-8 with a BOM so Excel displays all characters correctly, and values containing commas or quotes are escaped according to the CSV rules.

Back from Excel to JSON

To hand edited data back to developers, use XLSX to JSON: you get a list of objects keyed by the first row, with numbers kept as numbers and dates written like 2026-01-15. From a CSV, use CSV to JSON.

Summary

Think keys = columns, objects = rows. Convert JSON to XLSX to analyse it in Excel, and XLSX to JSON to send it back. For choosing between spreadsheet formats, see CSV vs XLSX.