Extract the same cells from multiple Excel files, one row per file

No. Files are read inside this browser and never sent anywhere. Once the page has loaded, it makes no network connections at all, so it keeps working with the network cable unplugged or in airplane mode. You can check this yourself: open your browser’s developer tools (F12), go to the Network tab, and watch it stay empty while you collect. Saved fields are just a .json file on your computer; nothing is stored on a server.

The free version collects up to 10 files per run. Files after the 10th stay in the list and in the export, marked “Not processed”. Export the results, then press “Keep only the unprocessed files” to continue with the next 10 (combine the exported files in Excel afterwards). With a Pro key the 10-file limit is gone and you can collect up to 5,000 files at once. Each file can be up to 200 MB. Measured on our test machine (4 cores, 16 GB of memory), 1,000 small form files (10–30 KB each) took about 10 seconds, and 5,000 took about 49 seconds. Your speed depends on your computer and the size of your files.

You don’t write any code or formulas. You click the cells you need in one copy of the form, and that’s the setup. No macros are involved, so it also works on work computers where macros are blocked.

Where the usual approaches get stuck: INDIRECT only returns values from workbooks that are open. Power Query’s “From Folder” is great at combining data that’s already shaped like a table, but pulling a few fixed cells out of a form layout means editing the query by hand. With VBA, you write a macro that opens every file and copies the cells, and then you maintain it.

Yes. The first column of the export is always the file name, followed by the values you picked, one row per file. You can see at a glance which value came from which file, which is handy when checking forms people have sent back.

Yes. Column widths, merged cells and borders are shown close to how they look in Excel, so you pick cells on a sheet that looks like the printed form. Clicking anywhere in a merged cell selects it as one cell (its top-left address). For sheets too large to display, use “Add by address”.

For each field, the tool remembers the heading to its left (or above it) in the template and compares it with the same cell in every file. Files that don’t match, because a row was inserted, a sheet was renamed or merged cells changed shape, are listed as “Needs review” and keep a “Needs review” column in the export. Values under a mismatched heading are left out of the export, so a value from the wrong field can’t slip in. If the heading turns up somewhere else, you’re told something like “shifted 1 row down”, and pressing “Re-read at the heading’s position” re-reads just that file, shifted by the same amount (marked “Adjusted”).

If a file has no sheet with the template’s sheet name, the sheet in the same position is read instead and the file goes to “Needs review”. From that sheet, only values whose headings match the template are exported. Fields whose layout check is set to “Don’t check” are left out, since they can’t be verified.

Only for sending a CSV to a Japanese system that expects Shift_JIS (also called Windows-31J or CP932). Characters that Shift_JIS can’t hold, such as accented letters (é, ü), many symbols, emoji and rare kanji such as 𠮷, become “?” in that CSV, and the tool lists the file and field for each one. Vendor-specific characters such as ①, 髙 and ㈱ display on Windows but can break on other systems, so they’re listed separately. If you don’t need Shift_JIS, export as CSV (UTF-8) or Excel (.xlsx), which keep every character as it is.

Yes, for up to 10 files per run, with no sign-up. Pro removes the 10-file limit (up to 5,000 files at once). It’s a one-time purchase for one person, not a subscription. See the Pro page for the price and how to buy.

No. Press “Save fields” to save a .json file, and next time use “Open saved fields” to load it. You can start collecting right away without picking cells in a template again; field names and layout-check settings come back as they were.