About the Excel activity package

The Excel activities package aids users to automate all aspects of Microsoft Excel, as we know it is an application intensely used by many in all types of businesses.

It contains activities that enable you to read information from a cell, columns, rows or ranges, write to other spreadsheets or workbooks, execute macros, and even extract formulas. You can also sort data, color code it or append additional information.

Note:

The UiPath.Excel.Activities pack is compatible with the following Microsoft Excel versions:

• 2013
• 2016
• 2019
• 2021
• Office 365

Modern Activities

The activities grouped under Modern are the newest activities that were initially designed for the StudioX profile.

The Excel Modern design experience and activities provide the same functionality as the StudioX business activities by default in Studio. To find out more about working with Excel activities in StudioX, see Excel Automation in the StudioX guide.

Modern Design Experience in Studio

Starting with Studio v2021.10 and UiPath.Excel.Activities v2.11.0, a modern design experience is available in the Studio profile. In the modern experience, the modern activities replace the classic activities in the Studio profile, and the StudioX design experience is brought to Studio.

The modern design experience is enabled by default. You can select the design experience for each project from the Excel activities project settings. When the classic experience is enabled for a project, the classic app integration activities that do not support interacting with Excel from the Plus menu are available in the Activities Panel in Studio instead of the modern activities.

Add the Use Excel File scope activity to indicate the file to automate and configure its child activities by selecting Excel data from the Plus menu of each property without having to manually enter expressions:

• Browse the contents of the file from the menu and select data that matches the type of each property. For example, you can select cells, ranges, tables, sheets, or charts from the worksheet. You can also indicate the current row or current sheet in an iteration.

  
  

  

  
  

• If you find it easier to work in Excel, use the Indicate in Excel option to select data directly from the file. This functionality requires that you install the Excel Add-in.

  
  

  

  
  

• Use the Custom Input option to manually specify the input based on table, chart, or sheet names or to enter references to a cell or a range.

  
  

  

  
  

If the file you want to automate does not exist yet, you can still use the options in the Plus menu by defining a file with the same structure as a template in the Use Excel File activity.

Workbook Activities

Workbook activities can be executed even if Microsoft Excel is not installed on the machine and can only read/write data to and from the file.

You can indicate the file to process in your activities in one of two ways:

• Provide the file path in each Workbook activity. When you use this option, the file is loaded in the memory at runtime for each activity that processes it. This option is best suited for smaller files.
• Connect your Studio project to the Excel file from the Data Manager to add it as a resource, then reference the resource in each Workbook activity by selecting it from the Plus menu. Using this option, once the file is loaded, it remains in the memory until all the activities in the defined scope are executed, providing the best runtime performance when working with larger files and a larger number activities. To optimize performance, set the scope to the container closest to where the activities that use the resource are placed in the workflow. For more information, see Using the Data Manager.

App Integration Activities

Classic app integration activities require the Excel app to be installed on the machine on which they run. For large and complex spreadsheets that span over a great number of rows and columns, we recommend using the App Integration activities, as these activities offer the best performance and consistency.

All app integration activities with the exception of CSV activities must be included in Excel Application Scope to work. Starting with version 2.10.4 of the Excel activities pack, these activities can also be included in the Use Excel File activity.

Dedicated activities enable you to work with .csv files, while all the others work with .xlsx and .xls. The ones that only work with Excel Application Scope can also work with .xlsm files.

Troubleshooting and Limitations

Note: The old Excel Binary File Format (.XLS) specific to Microsoft Excel 95 is not supported by the Excel Activities Pack.

• When you use activities that read, copy, or append ranges, please note that if a cell contains formatting information, Excel considers that cell as containing data, even though it appears empty.

• Please note that the Microsoft Office 2016 version 1708 (Build 8431.2079) changes the window title of files that are being edited and saved from "FileName.xlsx - Excel" to "FileName.xlsx - Saved". After closing the file, the filename reverts to normal.

  This may cause some problems if your automation project uses selectors which contain the window title. For example, the following selector no longer works if your Excel version is the previously mentioned one: <wnd app='excel.exe' cls='XLMAIN' title='FileName.xlsx - Excel' /> <wnd cls='EXCEL7' title='FileName.xlsx' />. To prevent this issue, we recommend using a dynamic variable selector.
• Some Excel versions always open SharePoint documents in read-only mode (e.g. Excel 2019). You can check if a remote document supports editing by opening it manually in Excel on your local machine.