How to properly assemble a valid xlsx file from its internal sub-components?

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In answer to your questions:

  1. XLSX is just a collection of XML files in a zip container. There is no other magic.
  2. If you decompress/unzip a valid XLSX files and then recompress/zip it and you can’t read the resulting output then the problem is generally with the files being rezipped or, less likely, the zipping software. The main thing to check is that the directory structure was maintained in the zip file.

Example of the contents of an xlsx file:

unzip -l example.xlsx
Archive:  example.xlsx
  Length     Date   Time    Name
 --------    ----   ----    ----
      769  10-15-14 09:23   xl/worksheets/sheet1.xml
      550  10-15-14 09:22   xl/workbook.xml
      201  10-15-14 09:22   xl/sharedStrings.xml
      ...

I regularly unzip XLSX files, make minor changes for testing and re-zip them without any issue.

Update: The important thing is to avoid zipping the parent directory. Here is an example using the zip system utility on Linux or the OS X:

# Unzip an xlsx file into a directory.
unzip example.xlsx -d newdir

# Make some valid changes to the files.
cd newdir/
vi xl/worksheets/sheet1.xml

# Rezip the files *FROM* the unzipped directory.
# Note: you could also re-zip to the original file if required.
find . -type f | xargs zip ../newfile.xlsx

# Check the file looks okay.
cd ..
unzip -l newfile.xlsx
xdg-open newfile.xlsx

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