If you are using Mysql you can try the  LOAD DATA   syntax. Essentially you could upload the file using php and then generate a dynamic query which you can then pass to your mysql_query()  function.

something similar to: 

LOAD DATA INFILE '/path/to/uploaded/file.csv' INTO TABLE test
  FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','  LINES STARTING BY 'xxx'  ignore 0;
 
see http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/load-data.html for more

I am sure there are other ways to load the data to various other DBMS



On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 1:08 PM, joe mwirigi <joemwirigi@gmail.com> wrote:
The cleanest i would recomend is the excel converted to csv, albeit people can share their experience with just plain excel

an example in php would look like

<?

$file_handle = fopen("file.csv", "r");
$x=0;
$fieldsStr == "";
while (!feof($file_handle) ) {
       $x+=1;
       $line_of_text = fgetcsv($file_handle, 1024);
//no of columns
$sz = sizeof($line_of_text);
                //the line of text is an array getting the size gives you the size of the array thus the no of columns you are dealing with
// you can do the rest here
        }
       fclose($file_handle);
?>
       
that should sought you for csv,
for actual excel you should consider 


_______________________________________________________________
We must Keep on, 
   
 


On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 12:24 PM, <rickinyua@gmail.com> wrote:
@Joe The data
Sent from my BlackBerry®

-----Original Message-----
From: joe mwirigi <joemwirigi@gmail.com>
Sender: skunkworks-bounces@lists.my.co.ke
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2012 12:14:29
To: Skunkworks Mailing List<skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke>
Reply-To: Skunkworks Mailing List <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke>
Subject: Re: [Skunkworks] php script for uploading an excel sheet to mysql db

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