The Data Curation primers are documents used as a reference to curate research data within a specific discipline area or when using certain software or data types. They are developed during a series of workshops were attendees get input from a mentor of the Data Curator Network. The results are published in GitHub repositories. Excel spreadsheets are widely used by researchers from different disciplines. This primer focuses on the common issues with regards to re-usability and long-term preservation associated with the Excel format and its conversion to more sustainable formats (e.g. csv).