# exportExcel file format and extension don't match

**URL:** <https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/exportexcel-file-format-and-extension-dont-match/29694>\
**Category:** Ignition\
**Created:** [November 5, 2019, 7:38pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/exportexcel-file-format-and-extension-dont-match/29694 "2019-11-05T19:38:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![JordanCClark](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/jordancclark/32/83362_2.png) [@JordanCClark](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/JordanCClark)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2019, 8:09pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/exportexcel-file-format-and-extension-dont-match/29694/2 "2019-11-05T20:09:48Z")

</div>

> [@michael.ruel](#):
>
> Does anyone know what format ignition is writing the file as?

It's an xml file That Excel can read into a worksheet.

> [@michael.ruel](#):
>
> Is there a way to work around this?

Not as such, but you can take a look at this post:

> [@Exporting to Excel](http://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/exporting-to-excel/16134):
>
> Hello, Maybe this can help. We were working a few days with this and it’s more related with Microsoft especification than Ignition. If you use the ignition function to export to excel (system.db…Excel) and use the xls extention, excel will raise a message argueing problems with the extension. You can solve this saving with XML extention. But in windows, excel doesn’t know that this xml file is an excel file. To solve this we add the following tag in the beggining of the file: \<?mso-applicati…

---

_[View the full topic](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/exportexcel-file-format-and-extension-dont-match/29694)._