5 Ways to Optimize Excel Sheets with Power Automate

Power Automate, part of Microsoft’s Power Platform, is a versatile tool designed to automate repetitive tasks and connect multiple applications in a single workflow. It’s especially valuable for businesses using Excel, where data needs frequent updates, validation, and reporting. Automating these workflows can significantly boost productivity, reduce errors, and improve overall efficiency in data management.

With Power Automate, users can build workflows that connect Excel to other applications, trigger actions based on specific events, and even execute on scheduled intervals to keep data updated. Each automation is made up of triggers (events that initiate the workflow) and actions (tasks the workflow performs). Power Automate’s “Excel Online (Business)” connector offers various actions like “Get rows,” “Add a row,” and “Update a row,” allowing robust interactions with Excel files stored on OneDrive or SharePoint. In this article, we’ll explore five ways to use Power Automate to optimize Excel sheets, complete with technical examples.

1. Automate Data Collection and Consolidation

Data collection and consolidation can be time-consuming, especially when it involves multiple sources. Power Automate allows users to pull data from various applications into a single Excel file automatically, streamlining the consolidation process and ensuring accuracy.

Technical Example: Imagine a marketing team wants to consolidate data from Google Sheets and Excel into one central Excel file stored on OneDrive.

• Trigger: Set up a “Recurrence” trigger to run the workflow daily, weekly, or as required.
• Actions:Use the Google Sheets connector’s “Get rows” action to extract data from Google Sheets.Use the Excel Online (Business) connector to “List rows present in a table” to retrieve data from another Excel file.Apply an Apply to Each loop to go through each row from Google Sheets and Excel.Within this loop, use the “Add a row” action to add data to a consolidated master Excel file.

This automation not only saves time but reduces errors in manual data entry. With this setup, Power Automate ensures that your Excel file always has the most up-to-date information from multiple sources, facilitating real-time analysis.

2. Schedule Automatic Data Refreshes

In dynamic environments, timely updates are crucial. Power Automate enables automatic data refreshes for Excel, ensuring the latest information is always available without needing manual intervention.

Technical Example: Suppose a finance department tracks stock prices in an Excel dashboard that requires hourly updates. Power Automate can schedule these refreshes by querying a database or API at specified intervals.

• Trigger: Configure a “Recurrence” trigger to initiate every hour.
• Actions:Use the SQL Server connector’s “Execute a SQL query” action to pull updated stock data.Use Excel Online (Business) “Update a row” to update specific rows in an Excel table based on the data returned from SQL.Alternatively, if a full data refresh is needed, delete existing rows in the Excel sheet before adding the updated data back.

With this setup, Power Automate refreshes your data at regular intervals, ensuring that the Excel dashboard reflects real-time stock prices. This is invaluable for finance teams making time-sensitive decisions.

3. Streamline Data Validation and Error Checking

Data integrity is essential for reliable analytics and reporting, but manually validating data can be tedious and error-prone. Power Automate allows users to define validation criteria, reducing errors and ensuring data accuracy.

Technical Example: Let’s say an HR team needs to maintain an Excel sheet with employee contact information, ensuring each email address is unique and phone numbers follow a specific format.

• Trigger: Set the workflow to start with the “When a row is created” trigger in the Excel file.
• Actions:Use “List rows present in a table” to retrieve all existing rows in the Excel sheet.Apply a Condition to identify duplicate email addresses by using the “Filter array” action, isolating any rows where the email address matches an existing entry.If duplicates are found, use “Send an email notification” to alert the user.Use Expression functions to validate phone number formats. For example, to validate a US phone number format, apply an expression like matches(phone, '^(\+1)\s\d{3}\s\d{3}-\d{4}$').If the format is incorrect, Power Automate can flag the row or notify the team.

This workflow ensures that only unique and correctly formatted data entries are allowed, helping the HR team maintain a clean and reliable contact database.

4. Notifications and Alerts for Key Updates

Timely alerts are vital in business processes to respond to critical changes in data. Power Automate can monitor specific data points in Excel and send notifications when they meet defined criteria, keeping teams informed and proactive.

Technical Example: Suppose a warehouse team wants an alert whenever an item’s stock level falls below 50 units. Power Automate can monitor the inventory levels and send alerts in real time.

• Trigger: Set the trigger to “When an item or a file is modified” to detect changes in the Excel sheet or use “Recurrence” for periodic checks.
• Actions:Use Excel Online (Business) “List rows present in a table” to retrieve all inventory data.Use an Apply to Each loop to review each row.Within the loop, add a Condition to check if an item’s quantity is below 50.If it is, use Outlook “Send an email” action to notify the inventory manager.For immediate communication, use the Microsoft Teams connector to post a message in a specified channel.

By setting up these alerts, the warehouse team can ensure they never run out of stock on essential items, reducing downtime and improving operational efficiency.

5. Automate Reporting and Data Exporting

Generating and distributing reports can be repetitive, but Power Automate streamlines this by automating report creation, export, and distribution based on data in Excel.

Technical Example: A project management team wants a weekly report of project statuses to be generated and emailed to stakeholders without manual intervention.

• Trigger: Use “Recurrence” to set the workflow to run at the end of each week.
• Actions:Use Excel Online (Business) “List rows present in a table” to pull project data.Use the “Create HTML table” action to format the data into a structured table format for easy readability.Use OneDrive “Create file” to save the HTML table as a PDF.Use Outlook “Send an email” action to send the PDF as an attachment to a list of stakeholders.

This automation handles everything from report generation to formatting and distribution, ensuring that stakeholders receive consistent and timely updates.

Summary

Power Automate transforms how organizations manage data in Excel by automating processes that would otherwise be time-consuming and error-prone. From consolidating data and refreshing information on a schedule to validating entries, sending alerts, and generating reports, Power Automate offers powerful capabilities for Excel users. These workflows streamline operations, reduce human error, and allow teams to focus on high-value tasks. By integrating Power Automate into your Excel processes, you’ll unlock efficiency and accuracy, enabling your organization to make smarter, data-driven decisions.