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Editorial Team
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Editorial Team
Asked: June 12, 20262026-06-12T18:18:05+00:00 2026-06-12T18:18:05+00:00

Possible Duplicate: Alternative for PHP_excel PHPExcel reader — help required First post. I have

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Possible Duplicate:
Alternative for PHP_excel
PHPExcel reader — help required

First post. I have a very specific need for reading and writing very large (5mb+) excel files using PHP/My SQL. I have used PHPExcel and, while it is very elegant, it is way too slow and uses far too much PHP memory for my needs. At the moment I am limited to 32M PHP memory from my host.

My current solution is as follows:

Importing to database

I use php-excel reader (http://code.google.com/p/php-excel-reader/) for .xls files – Can import about 3000 rows before PHP runs out of memory.
I use spreadsheet reader (https://github.com/nuovo/spreadsheet-reader) for .xlsx files and so far I’ve tried 5000 rows+ without running out of memory. It is very slow which leads me to believe it is opening and closing the excel file and reading chunks of data at a time.

Exporting

PHP Excel for anything under about 500 rows. Works beautifully but is very slow and can’t handle for than a few hundred rows with 32Mb PHP memory (Note: I am using cacheing which has helped but not enough)

Basic tab-delimited text for any more than 500 rows. Very fast, no limit on rows but no formatting and not true excel.

Ideally, I’m looking for an all-in-one solution that can read and write .xls and .xlsx files quickly and without running into memory issues. I don’t mind a commercial product and would be happy to pay a few hundred dollars for something that works.

I have spent hours scouring the internet and this site but haven’t found anything yet.

Any ideas?

PS: If anyone wants to see how I’ve implemented the above solutions, I’d be happy to share the code

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  1. Editorial Team
    Editorial Team
    2026-06-12T18:18:06+00:00Added an answer on June 12, 2026 at 6:18 pm

    As you’re unhappy with the speed and memory requirements of PHPExcel, I’ll point you to my standard answer to this question. If the answer isn’t listed there, then it probably doesn’t exist: that list is as comprehensive as I know…. though people writing their own alternatives to PHPExcel rarely bother to tell me making it difficult to keep up-to-date

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