Introduction
Automating tasks that are related to storing and manipulating data in Microsoft Excel is essential for most businesses.
Working with a considerable amount of data in Excel is common, especially in large organizations where Excel is used across multiple departments such as sales, accounting, and human resources. Excel documents contain data in rows and columns, which is spread across multiple worksheets.
Entering, processing, and selecting data from an Excel document are algorithmic tasks that are often performed manually, which means the potential for numerous scenarios and use cases for automating these tasks.
For example, consider a scenario where a company receives a list of customers in an Excel document. The document structure might differ from the way that the company keeps its records. Before the new list can be added to any main file, the data must be restructured to match the structure of the main file.
Thus, the Excel document must be read, the rows or columns must be shifted to match the format of the main file, and then the data must be copied to the main file to ensure no errors or loss of information. This task can be automated to ensure that all updates to the main file occur without human intervention and in an error-free way.
This module demonstrates some of the most common uses of Excel actions by designing flows which automate Excel-related business tasks.
Learning objectives
In this module, you'll learn how to:
- Open Excel files and attach a flow to an already opened file.
- Use the Excel group of actions to read and write data to and from Excel files.
- Create and edit worksheets.
- Save and close Excel files.
Prerequisites
To complete this module, you'll need to have basic familiarity with the Power Automate for desktop console and flow designer, in addition to basic familiarity with Microsoft Excel.