How to use Excel in Microsoft Power Automate Desktop

This video tutorial shows how to automate Excel with Power Automate desktop. You'll learn how to read Excel sheets and update cells. Finally, it explains how to solve errors with Excel and Power Automate Desktop.

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0:00 Intro
The data to be automated today is an Excel sheet with a table. We want to read columns and calculate a result into a new column.

1:11 Read Excel
With a Launch Excel action, we specify which Excel book we want to automate. The best practice is to use a variable for the path. Remember to use a Close Excel action as well. Otherwise, Power Automate Desktop will lock your Excel book. Finally, the Read from Excel worksheet action reads the content of an Excel sheet into a DataTable, which we can easily manipulate and do calculations on.

7:38 For each Row in Excel DataTable
Use a For each action to iterate through a DataTable. Now we can update rows one by one.

8:46 Update Excel Rows
With a Write to Excel worksheet action, we can update Excel rows. For example, we subtract one cell from another in the row and write the result into a third cell. When we want to calculate with DataTables and Excel, we need to convert the objects/text to numerical values with a Convert text to number.

16:19 Excel Error in Power Automate Desktop
When you automate Excel in Power Automat Desktop, you often see an error saying “Failed to open Excel document” or “File related error”. The solution is to terminate Excel with the command prompt.

#powerautomate #powerplatform #office365

[andersjensenorg]

Did the video help you?
- You can then help me by giving it a thumbs up 🙌❤
Thank you 😊

[Itility_Peace_Of_Mind]

Wow that explanation was so clear and precise, I'll be watching more of your videos.

[ALVINMAN]

Great great Video. I saw this video after i saw another several PAD videos (harder) from your channel.
I had to sart for this one. Many many problems i had before with Excel. Now i know how to fix the Excel Problems..
Thank you Anders Jensen. Obrigado.

[eduardciobanu]

Hi,
Great video!
Do you know maybe, how to open all excel from folder(or 1 by one) and rename excel file with cell C2 from each file?
Thank you

[celenius]

Great video! What actions should I use when I want to refresh a data table in my Excel, copy the entire table and paste it on another sheet on the first empty row?

[duchienx]

thank for your great videos @andersjensenorg! Can we copy data from excel's cell to somewhere on website?

[SandroMochiaro]

Congratulations on the video. One question please. If I had a spreadsheet with several file paths, how could I update the variable with the Excel path that is declared at the beginning?

[Jasonmadcow]

Hi! Thanks for your videos. Quick Question; what advantage (other than debugging) to use excel with Automate Desktop instead of just a normal "cloud flow" (AKA power automate)?

Thanks in advance!

[Saks]

I found a solution After seeing your video.

[rken]

Thank you for sharing many useful articles about Power Automate Desktop!!!

I have an Excel file (xlsm) containing VBA code, and I need to do the following steps:
1. Delete or hide the VBA code (convert to xlsx format?)
2. Restore the deleted or hidden VBA code from step 1.
Is there any way to accomplish these steps?
Thanks!

[nareshkumar-qoqy]

iam using local website in which i have to click a parent link containing child links which may vary in each parent link. So how can I loop through different number of child links of a parent link to scrape data. I used for loop in which starting point I put 1, and increment by 1, but I dont know end point. Experimentally i gave -1 in end point but PAD doesnt gave what I want.

[anaosorio]

Since last update of PAD the excel does not launch. I've already tried to solve by running aplication before launch excel as I tried to finish process. Do you have any other ideias to solve it?

[markstones]

How can I apply a similar action to all of my excel files on a folder.

[jfrlawal]

I want to use power automate desktop to fill a web page with the content of an excel table . First, I will have to match the beneficiary Id from both table then take each item of the Mother DoB column of the excel table then click on update on the web page and populate. Kindly provide me with step by step guide.