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Platform limits and requirements with Office Scripts

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There are some platform limitations of which you should be aware when developing Office Scripts. This article details the browser support and data limits for Office Scripts for Excel.

Platform support

To use Office Scripts, you'll need the following.

  1. Excel on the web, Excel for Windows (Version 2210 or higher), or Excel for Mac.
  2. OneDrive for Business.
  3. Any of the following Microsoft 365 subscription licenses:
    • Office 365 Business
    • Office 365 Business Premium
    • Office 365 ProPlus
    • Office 365 ProPlus for Devices
    • Office 365 A3
    • Office 365 A5
    • Office 365 Enterprise E1
    • Office 365 Enterprise E3
    • Office 365 Enterprise E5
    • Office 365 F3
  4. Internet connectivity with connected experiences enabled.

Note

If you meet these requirements and are still not seeing the Automate tab, it's possible that your admin has disabled the feature or there's some other problem with your environment. Please follow the steps under Automate tab not appearing or Office Scripts unavailable to start using Office Scripts.

Important

To use Office Scripts in Power Automate, you must have a business license of Microsoft 365. The Office 365 Enterprise E1 and Office 365 F3 licenses can use Scripts with Power Automate, but don't have Power Automate integrations directly in Excel.

Data limits

There are limits on how much Excel data can be transferred at once and how many individual Power Automate transactions can be conducted.

Excel

Excel on the web has the following limitations when making calls to the workbook through a script.

  • Requests and responses are limited to 5MB.
  • A range is limited to five million cells.

When you exceed one of the Excel data limits, you receive this error message: "The response payload size has exceeded the limit."

If you're encountering errors when dealing with large datasets, try using multiple smaller ranges instead of larger ranges. For an example, see the Write a large dataset sample. You can also use APIs like Range.getSpecialCells to target specific cells instead of large ranges.

Excel limits that aren't specific to Office Scripts can be found in the article Excel specifications and limits.

Power Automate

The following limitations with the Power Automate platform are the ones you're most likely to encounter.

Additional Power Automate platform usage limitations can be found in the following articles.

Power Automate specific restrictions

There are a few important differences between running a script in the Excel application and running a script as part of a Power Automate flow.

No external calls from a script

External API calls fail when a script is run through Power Automate. A fetch call will give the error message "Runtime error: Line X: fetch is not defined". Be sure to check your scripts for such references before building them into a flow.

You'll have to use HTTP with Azure AD or other equivalent actions to pull data from or push it to an external service.

Warning

External calls made through the Power Automate Excel Online connector fail in order to help uphold existing data loss prevention policies. However, scripts that are run through Power Automate are done so outside of your organization, and outside of your organization's firewalls. For additional protection from malicious users in this external environment, your admin can control the use of Office Scripts. Your admin can either disable the Excel Online connector in Power Automate or turn off Office Scripts for Excel through the Office Scripts administrator controls.

API behavior differences

Some APIs behave differently when run with Power Automate. Others fail due to their reliance on the Excel UI. The full lists are found in Troubleshoot Office Scripts running in Power Automate.

ISO strict Open XML workbooks aren't supported

The Excel Business (Online) connector's Run script action doesn't support workbooks with the ISO strict version of the Excel Workbook file format. Flows with this type of workbook return a "BadGateway" error when trying to run a script. This is due to coauthoring restrictions. Please save workbooks as the standard Excel Workbook format for use with Power Automate.

Teams support

Important

When using Excel with Teams, Office Scripts are only supported in Teams on the web (not Teams for Windows, Mac, iOS, or Android).

Government cloud support

Office Scripts aren't supported on GCC High or above. External calls from scripts may be affected by firewall settings in other government clouds.

Third-party cookies for Excel on the web

Your browser needs third-party cookies enabled to show the Automate tab in Excel on the web. Check your browser settings if the tab isn't being displayed. If you're using a private browser session, you may need to re-enable this setting each time.

Note

Some browsers refer to this setting as "all cookies", instead of "third-party cookies".

Conditional Access

Conditional Access policies restrict access to SharePoint and OneDrive for unmanaged devices. If your device isn't managed by the tenant, you may not have access to specific scripts, or may only be able to access them through the browser.

If you script is blocked by Conditional Access policies, you receive one of two error messages. These messages also surface in Power Automate if your flow is run from an unmanaged device.

  • "Due to organizational policies, you can’t access this resource from this untrusted device."
  • "We can't find this script. It may have been deleted by another user." (If your version of Excel is older.)

Important

Administrators should consider blocking all access to Power Automate from unmanaged devices. This process is detailed in the blog post Control Access to Power Apps and Power Automate with Azure AD Conditional Access Policies.

API support on older Excel versions

Some Office Scripts APIs may not be supported by Excel for Windows or Excel for Mac, especially older builds. These include newer APIs and APIs for web-only features. If a script contains unsupported APIs, the Code Editor displays a warning. If you try to run such a script, it won't run. Instead, the Script Run Status task pane displays a warning message that says, "This script currently must be run on Excel for the web. Open the workbook in the browser then try again, or contact the script owner for help."

Using an older version of Excel to open workbooks with scripts shared in them has no effect on the script itself.

See also