Source Control and Continuous Deployment... for a Spreadsheet?!
summary
A community “Chicago native plants” database is a single Excel workbook that ends up as a zip of XML, so a one‑character fix explodes into many XML diffs; the workflow experiments include extracting xlsx to XML, using xlsx is a zip of XML to inspect sharedStrings, PowerShell’s ImportExcel/EPPlus (compare-worksheet), and integrating spreadsheet compare into git via a batch wrapper (adds a 5s delay). Alternatives (Excel Trail $420/user/yr, zippy, xls2txt, CSV+GitHub Actions → Export-Excel) are evaluated; chosen solution stores the .xlsx in git and launches Spreadsheet Compare for readable diffs, which works but requires Windows/Office and increases repo storage.
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chapters (20)
- 0:00Source control for spreadsheets
- 2:07Gardening project to spreadsheet
- 10:06Native plant database in Excel
- 14:21Excel files hard to version
- 15:22Excel file structure
- 16:04Excel files vs WinMerge
- 18:52Manual Excel diff limits
- 19:13PowerShell for spreadsheet diff
- 20:16Spreadsheet Compare for Git workflows
- 23:26Excel diff with Git
- 25:10Excel version control options
- 27:59Source control for Excel
- 31:46Continuous deployment for Excel
- 32:48Excel to CSV for automation
- 33:51CSV to Excel with PowerShell
- 35:58Formatting automated Excel
- 37:01CSV Excel automation challenges
- 38:24Best Excel version control
- 38:44Recap and learning
- 40:06Q&A
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