ODK XLSForm.exe is a Windows application for converting an XLSForm into an XForm that is compliant with the ODK XForms spec.
ODK XLSForm.exe is part of Open Data Kit (ODK), a free and open-source set of tools which help organizations author, field, and manage mobile data collection solutions. Learn more about the Open Data Kit project and its history here and read about example ODK deployments here.
- ODK website: https://opendatakit.org
- ODK forum: https://forum.opendatakit.org
- ODK developer Slack chat: http://slack.opendatakit.org
- ODK developer Slack archive: http://opendatakit.slackarchive.io
- ODK developer wiki: https://github.com/opendatakit/opendatakit/wiki
- XLSForm.exe does not work on every computer, it does not validate the output XML, and it is not updated frequently. For these reasons, we recommend you use the online XLSForm converter.
- When running the app, some users might be missing the Microsoft Visual C runtime DLL on their computer. This DLL is not bundled with the exe and there is no easy workaround for these users.
- Download the zip from the ODK website.
- Extract it somewhere.
- Drag an XLSForm onto XLSForm.exe.
- A corresponding XForm will appear in the output directory.
- Install Git and add it to your path.
- Fork the xlsform-windows project (why and how to fork).
- Clone your fork of the project locally. At the command line:
git clone https://github.com/YOUR-GITHUB-USERNAME/xlsform-windows
- Install Python 2.7.x (32-bit).
- Add
C:\Python27
andC:\Python27\Scripts
to your path.
- Add
- Install required libraries for pyxform.
pip install xlrd unicodecsv
- Download elementtree (zip).
- Unzip and run
python setup.py install
in the unzipped directory.
- Unzip and run
- Install py2exe (32-bit for Python 2.7).
- Download the latest release of the pyxform source.
- In XLSForm.exe's root directory, add the nested
pyxform
directory from pyxform's source. - In XLSForm.exe's root directory, run
python setup.py py2exe
.- You may get an expected warning about missing modules and binary dependencies.
- The build is successful when there is a
xlsform.exe
file inside thedist
directory.
- Inside the
dist
directory, create anoutput
directory. - Confirm
xlsform.exe
works dragging a sample file onto the binary.- A corresponding XForm will appear in the
output
directory. - You can also run it from the command line to see debugging information, if any.
- A corresponding XForm will appear in the
- Build the exe and confirm it works.
- In the
dist
directory, rename thexlsform.exe
file toXLSForm.exe
. - In the
dist
folder, make sureoutput
is empty. - Rename the
dist
directory toXLSForm vx.x.x
. - Right-click on
XLSForm vx.x.x
, chooseSend To / Compressed (zipped) folder
.- The resulting zip file is equivalent to the zip available on the ODK website page.
Any and all contributions to the project are welcome. ODK XLSForm.exe is used across the world primarily by organizations with a social purpose so you can have real impact!
Issues tagged as quick win should be a good place to start. There are also currently many issues tagged as needs reproduction which need someone to try to reproduce them with the current version of ODK XLSForm.exe and comment on the issue with their findings.
If you're ready to contribute code, see the contribution guide.
Current and previous production builds can be found on the ODK website.