Try csvtk which has some subcommands that can be piped to accomplish the operations you want.

• xlsx2csv, convert XLSX to CSV format
• grep, grep data by selected fields with patterns/regular expressions
• cut, select and arrange fields
• csv2xlsx, convert CSV/TSV files to XLSX file

For batch proccessing, use GNU parallel, rush or other tools.

Please do not delete post once you got suggestions. Here is another solution:

Please follow the instructions:

1. Create a directory test
2. Copy 5 excel files (not move) to the test directory
3. Save following bash script in a file called 'script.sh' and place it inside test directory
4. Make the script executable ( chmod +x script.sh) and execute the script (./script.sh) in test directory.
5. A directory by name new will be created. Within new directory, 5 xls files will be present.
6. Carefully check the output and see if it is as per your requirements.
7. Run it on all excel files. Take a back up all xls files before you execute the script
8. To run the script, you would need libreoffice (calc) installed on your machine.

Script:

#! /usr/bin/env bash

mkdir -p new
for i in *.xls;
    do libreoffice --headless --convert-to csv $i --outdir new ;
    awk -F "," '$17 !~ /efflux pump/ {print $17}' new/${i%.*}.csv  > ${i%.*}.csv ;
    libreoffice --headless --convert-to xls ${i%.*}.csv  --outdir new ;
    rm ${i%.*}.csv;
    rm new/${i%.*}.csv;
done