Excel Formula to PHP Converter

Turning spreadsheet formulas into PHP

Quotes, invoices, shipping costs and commission rules are often specified in Excel and then implemented in a PHP application — Laravel, Symfony, WordPress or WooCommerce. This converter reads the formula with Excel's operator precedence and writes PHP 8 code you can drop into a service class or helper file.

=IFERROR(VLOOKUP(A2, Products!A2:C500, 3, FALSE), "Not found")

function calculate($a2, $products_a2_c500)
{
    return if_error(fn() => vlookup($a2, $products_a2_c500, 3, false), 'Not found');
}

How Excel functions map to PHP

PHP-specific details

• Nested ternaries. Since PHP 8, unparenthesised nested ternaries are a fatal error. Every nested IF is wrapped in parentheses automatically.
• Concatenation precedence. In PHP 8, + and - bind tighter than ., so "Total: " . $a + $b adds first. The converter keeps Excel's meaning either way.
• Multibyte text. LEFT, MID, LEN, UPPER and LOWER use the mb_* functions, so accented characters and emoji count as one character, like in Excel.
• FIND and SEARCH. strpos() returns false or a 0-based offset; the find_pos() helper returns Excel's 1-based position (0 when not found).
• MOD. PHP's % and fmod() keep the sign of the dividend; excel_mod() matches Excel for negative numbers.
• Errors. IFERROR catches DivisionByZeroError and lookup failures through if_error(fn() => …), using arrow functions (PHP 7.4+).
• Dates. TODAY(), DATE() and YEAR() use DateTime objects.

Using the output

Helpers are plain functions placed above your function. In a framework, move them into a helper file or make them static methods on a class. Ranges are PHP arrays: a single column is a list, and a multi-column range is a list of rows.

Supported functions: IF, IFS, SWITCH, AND, OR, NOT, XOR, IFERROR, IFNA, ISBLANK, ISNUMBER, ISTEXT, SUM, AVERAGE, MIN, MAX, COUNT, COUNTA, COUNTBLANK, PRODUCT, MEDIAN, ROUND, ROUNDUP, ROUNDDOWN, INT, TRUNC, ABS, SIGN, MOD, POWER, SQRT, EXP, LN, LOG, LOG10, PI, CEILING, FLOOR, RAND, RANDBETWEEN, SUMIF, SUMIFS, COUNTIF, COUNTIFS, AVERAGEIF, AVERAGEIFS, SUMPRODUCT, VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, MATCH, INDEX, CONCAT, CONCATENATE, TEXTJOIN, LEFT, RIGHT, MID, LEN, UPPER, LOWER, PROPER, TRIM, SUBSTITUTE, REPLACE, FIND, SEARCH, REPT, VALUE, EXACT, TEXT (number formats), TODAY, NOW, DATE, YEAR, MONTH, DAY. To bring the sheet's data along, convert it with Excel to PHP array.

Tools that pair well with the Excel Formula to PHP

• Excel Formula to JavaScript — Paste a spreadsheet formula and get readable JavaScript: a function with named parameters, correct operator precedence and small helper functions for things JavaScript lacks, such as SUMIFS and VLOOKUP.
• Excel Formula to Python — Paste an Excel or Google Sheets formula and get a Python function with clean variable names, the right imports and helpers for SUMIFS, VLOOKUP and Excel-style rounding.
• Excel Formula to SQL — Paste an Excel formula and get the equivalent SQL expression or SELECT query — IF and IFS as CASE WHEN, SUMIFS and COUNTIFS as conditional aggregates, and the right string and date functions for your database.
• CSV & Excel to SQL — Paste CSV or Excel cells, or open an .xlsx file, and get ready-to-run CREATE TABLE and INSERT statements with correctly escaped values for your database.