How to configure docling to export from xlsx without hidden value ？

[kennard520]

How to configure docling to export from xlsx without hidden value ？

[dosubot[bot]]

Hi @kennard520! I'm Dosu and I’m helping the docling team.

Docling does not currently support excluding hidden rows or columns from XLSX exports via configuration or backend options. The XLSX backend parses all data in the used region of each visible sheet, regardless of whether rows or columns are hidden. Only fully hidden (invisible) sheets are skipped during processing—hidden rows and columns within visible sheets are always included in the export. There is no documented or code-level option to change this behavior (source, discussion).

A practical workaround is to preprocess your XLSX file to remove or unhide hidden rows and columns before running Docling. You can do this with pandas or openpyxl. For example, using openpyxl:

from openpyxl import load_workbook

wb = load_workbook("input.xlsx")
for ws in wb.worksheets:
    # Remove hidden rows
    for row_idx in list(ws.row_dimensions):
        if ws.row_dimensions[row_idx].hidden:
            ws.delete_rows(row_idx)
    # Remove hidden columns
    for col_idx in list(ws.column_dimensions):
        if ws.column_dimensions[col_idx].hidden:
            ws.delete_cols(ws[col_idx + "1"].column)
wb.save("output_no_hidden.xlsx")

Then run Docling on the cleaned file. This ensures only visible data is exported.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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[kennard520]

Thanks. By the way, how to resolve the file end with xls?

[dosubot[bot]]

Docling only supports .xlsx files natively, not .xls files. If you have a file ending with .xls, you'll need to convert it to .xlsx first. You can do this using LibreOffice, Microsoft Excel, or Python libraries like pandas and xlrd. For example, with pandas:

import pandas as pd

# Read .xls file
df = pd.read_excel("input.xls", engine="xlrd")
# Save as .xlsx
df.to_excel("output.xlsx", index=False)

Once converted, you can process the .xlsx file with Docling as usual. There is no backend option or workaround for direct .xls processing in Docling—conversion is required for compatibility (source), (discussion).

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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[kennard520]

But there are some images in the file