What Excel is
An Excel workbook is a zip archive of XML parts describing sheets, cells, formulas, styles and charts. The .xlsx extension is that format; .xls is the older binary one from before 2007.
Finance, operations and anyone who received a file from finance or operations.
What SQL is
SQL here means the statements that move a table into a database: INSERT INTO with a VALUES list, and optionally the CREATE TABLE that defines the columns.
Anyone seeding a database, moving a spreadsheet into an application, or writing a migration.
What changes when you convert Excel to SQL
Only the first sheet is read, and cells are read as the text Excel displays rather than the number underneath. That matters for dates: a cell showing 15/03/2026 arrives as that string, not as a serial number you would then have to decode.
String values are escaped by doubling any single quote. Statements are written in batches so a large table does not become one statement megabytes long, which many clients refuse. Ask for CREATE TABLE as well and column types are inferred: a column stays INT until a value does not fit, then widens to DECIMAL, then to VARCHAR.
What carries over from Excel to SQL
One property of the Excel has no home in SQL, and it is worth knowing which before you convert.
SQL marks its header cells differently from its data cells, so the first row is written with that marker.
Anything visual in the Excel - weight, alignment, colour, column widths - has no counterpart in SQL and is dropped. The values are what survives.
The result can be read a record at a time, and appended to by adding to the end of it. That is worth having for a table too large to hold in memory, and it means a SQL file that is cut off part way through still gives you every record before the cut.
Both formats record types, so numbers, booleans and nulls survive as themselves rather than as text.