One of the most recognizable document formats in use in business settings today is an Excel spreadsheet. Like other spreadsheet programs, Excel presents data in a grid of rows and columns, which intersect at cells. Cell data can include numbers, text, and formulas. A spreadsheet also can include other features, such as graphs. BIRT Designer includes an out-of-the-box data connector to support using an Excel spreadsheet (XLS or XLSX) as a data source for a report design.

As with other types of data sources, for a report to use data from Excel, you must create the following BIRT objects: