DuckDB Meets Excel: xlwings Lite Data Tools

Published: January 9, 2026

xlwings Lite runs Python in Excel - you get DuckDB, Pandas, ML libraries right inside Excel. The constraint: it can't access your local file system due to browser restrictions.

That's a problem for large datasets. You have a 1.2 GB DuckDB file on GitHub. Or a 1.5 GB CSV from a client. Or a SQLite database or a JSON dump....

xlwings Lite can process them - but how do you get them in?

I built two tools to solve this.

Tool 1: DuckIt - File Converter & Hosting

Drop CSV files, get back DuckDB or Parquet with shareable link. Paste that link into xlwings Lite, start querying. Tested with 1.5 GB CSVs, 10M+ records. Or upload existing DuckDB/Parquet for instant sharing.

DuckIt Diagram

Tool 2: xlwings Lite Data Importer

Pulls files from URLs directly into Excel. Paste URL, click import. Works with DuckIt, GitHub, Google Drive, Dropbox.

Handles DuckDB, SQLite, CSV, Parquet, JSON. Auto-detects file type, loads directly into DuckDB. Parquet remains as is. Tested up to 1.2 GB DuckDB download, 20M+ records.

xlwings Downloader

Example Workflow

Client sends 1 GB CSV. Upload to DuckIt get DuckDB link paste in Excel query with SQL. No email attachments, no local file management.

DuckIt xlwings

Technical Details

DuckIt does CSV-to-Parquet conversion in-browser, backend creates DuckDB with time-limited signed URLs. Importer runs in xlwings Lite with CORS bypass via Cloudflare Worker. Multi-level file type detection (URL header magic bytes).

Both tools open source. Full technical details, how-to, and live demo files at links below.

Privacy Notice

Files stored on my server with time-limited signed URLs. API calls logged. Directory access is token authenticated. Free service, no guarantees. Deploy your own for production use.