InfoPath XML to Excel, without InfoPath
Every form submitted through InfoPath was saved as an .xml file — structured data that’s still perfectly good, locked behind software that’s going away. And SharePoint’s own “Export to Excel” never helped: it captured only the handful of columns promoted to the library view, not the full form.
To get InfoPath data into Excel, drop the form library’s .xml records into the openxsn tool: it builds one workbook with a row per record, a column for every field, and repeating tables broken out as line items — in your browser, nothing uploaded, no .xsn template required.
Below: how the field mapping works, exactly what the workbook contains, and the three-step export.
How the export maps XML fields to columns
An InfoPath record is a tree of named fields — the same data source the form’s designer saw as myFields. The extract walks every record you drop in, takes each scalar field as a column (named by its path, so nothing is ambiguous), and writes one row per record. Fields that repeat — expense lines, inspection findings, any “repeating table” from the form — would wreck a flat sheet, so they move to a second sheet with one row per entry, keyed back to the record they came from.
The details that usually go wrong in ad-hoc conversions are handled: values that look numeric but aren’t — ZIP codes, employee IDs with leading zeros — stay text instead of being mangled into numbers, rich-text answers flatten to their readable text, and the column set is unioned across every record, so a field that only appears in later submissions still gets its column. The result is a standard Office Open XML workbook plus the same tables as CSV.
What you get
| Output | Contents |
|---|---|
data.xlsx — Records sheet | One row per .xml record; columns named by the form’s data-source paths |
data.xlsx — Line items sheet | One row per repeating-table entry, keyed to its record |
data.csv / line-items.csv | The same tables as plain CSV for scripts and imports |
How to export the data
- Download the .xml files from your form library (select all → download, or copy from the file share).
- Drop them into the tool — the first three records preview free.
- Unlock exports (one-time $39, covers every batch) and download the ZIP: it contains
data.xlsxand the CSVs. Add the .xsn template in the same pass and the ZIP also includes every record rendered as PDF-ready documents.
Your data is already structured. Stop reading it one XML file at a time.
Extract to ExcelQuestions
Do I need the .xsn template for the Excel export?
No — the data extract works from the .xml records alone. Field names come from the XML structure itself, which is the same structure the form’s data source panel showed. The template only matters for the visual rendering (PDF/HTML exports).
How are repeating tables handled?
They get their own sheet. Sheet 1 is one row per record with every scalar field; a second “Line items” sheet holds one row per repeating-group entry (expense lines, inspection items, etc.), keyed back to its record — the layout you’d want for a pivot table.
Didn't SharePoint have an 'Export to Excel' for form libraries?
It exported only the columns that had been promoted to the library view — usually a handful — not the full form contents. And with Forms Services retiring on July 14, 2026, the library UI around those forms is going away too. This extract reads the complete record.
Is the output a real .xlsx file?
Yes — a standard Office Open XML workbook that Excel, Numbers, Google Sheets, and LibreOffice all open natively, plus the same tables as plain CSV for scripts and imports.