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ClickRuntime

Automate Microsoft Excel

Treat an Excel workbook as the live record it already is: add rows from forms and other tools, flag rows that meet a condition, mark new entries as complete or missing information, and refresh figures from the web on a schedule. It works on .xlsx files in OneDrive for Business or SharePoint. Describe what you want to your AI assistant, check what it will do, and it keeps running with your laptop closed.

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Try asking

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every weekday at 6pm, fetch the latest price and expense ratio for each ticker in my ETFs table and update their rows.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

Ideas

What you can automate in Microsoft Excel

Tables that fill and update themselves, alerts on the rows that need attention, weekly totals by email, and old rows archived on time. These are ready-made starting points. Anything else you can describe works too.
Daily

Refresh an Excel table with live web data

Rows in your table are updated with the latest figures from a website or API, so the workbook is current when you open it.

See how it works
Daily

Get alerted about rows that need action

You get the rows that match your rule, like students marked absent, with the context you need.

See how it works
Hourly

Check new rows and set their status

New entries are checked for missing fields and marked Received or Missing info, with a summary sent to you.

See how it works
The moment it happens

Add rows to Excel from any tool

Data posted to your link is written as a new row in the table you choose.

See how it works
Weekly

Get weekly totals from an Excel tracker

Every Monday you get the totals from your tracker without opening the file.

See how it works
Every 15 minutes

Hear in Slack when a status changes

When the Status column changes on a row, the change is posted in Slack.

See how it works
Every 10 minutes

Get an email for each new Excel row

Each row added to your table reaches your inbox within minutes.

See how it works
DailyAI

Turn new rows into a daily digest

Each day the new items in a sheet are written up as a short digest and emailed to you.

See how it works
Weekly

Save a dated copy of a workbook weekly

Every Friday a copy of your workbook is saved with the date in its name.

See how it works
Monthly

Move old rows to an Archive sheet

Rows older than your cut-off leave the main table each month, keeping it fast and readable.

See how it works Your own logic

Any other automation you can describe in words

Your own rules, schedule and AI steps with Microsoft Excel, plus any other app. Describe it and your assistant builds it.

See how to build your own

Build your own

Build any Microsoft Excel automation you can describe

The ideas above are ready-made starting points, not a fixed list. Describe what Microsoft Excel should do in your own words, with your conditions, other apps or an AI step, and your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.

  • Your own rules

    Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.

  • Any number of apps

    One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.

  • AI where it helps

    Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.

  • On a schedule or on each event

    Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

For example, ask your assistant

Every morning, check the Stock column in my Inventory workbook in Microsoft Excel and set Reorder to Yes for any row below its Minimum value.

When an Outlook email from orders@ arrives, add the customer, product and quantity as a new row in my Orders workbook in Microsoft Excel.

Every Friday, total this week's rows in my Sales workbook in Microsoft Excel, save a copy to my Weekly folder in OneDrive and send me the totals on Telegram.

Works with

Microsoft Excel with the apps you already use

An Excel table is often where a team's records end up. Connecting it to your mailbox, file storage and phone fills those rows automatically and tells people when they change.

Microsoft Excel works with hundreds of other apps

Name any of them when you ask your assistant, and your automation connects them. Over 248 apps are ready to go, and anything with an API works too.

  • SharePoint
  • Microsoft Teams
  • Power BI
  • Outlook Calendar
  • Microsoft To Do
  • Dynamics 365
  • Google Sheets
  • Airtable
  • Smartsheet
  • Slack
  • Gmail
  • Typeform
  • Jotform
  • QuickBooks
  • Xero
  • Stripe
  • Shopify
  • HubSpot

Beyond chat

Have Microsoft Excel work when you're not in the chat

Connecting Microsoft Excel to ChatGPT or Claude lets you ask about it while you chat. ClickRuntime handles the part that should happen on its own: checks on a schedule and actions on each new event, set up from the same chat and running after you close it.

Setup

Connect Microsoft Excel

Excel connects through the Microsoft Entra app registration you create in your own tenant, the same one Outlook and OneDrive can use. You add the file permission and keep control of it in Entra.

Microsoft Excel

Spreadsheets

  1. At entra.microsoft.com, open App registrations and create one with the Web redirect URI https://clickruntime.com/oauth/callback, or reuse your existing Microsoft registration.
  2. Under Certificates & secrets, create a client secret and copy the value.
  3. Under API permissions, add Microsoft Graph delegated permissions Files.ReadWrite and offline_access, plus admin consent if your organisation requires it.
  4. In the ClickRuntime dashboard, open Connections, choose Microsoft Excel and enter the Tenant ID, Client ID and client secret.

Good to know

Microsoft Excel limits that affect automations

  • Workbooks must be .xlsx. Older .xls files need to be saved as .xlsx first.
  • Only work or school accounts are supported. Workbooks in a personal OneDrive can't be edited through this connection.
  • Workbook sessions expire after a few minutes of inactivity, so each run opens a fresh session rather than holding one open.
  • Row changes are found by checking the table on a schedule, every 10 to 15 minutes for alerts, so updates are not instant.

FAQ

Questions about automating Microsoft Excel

Does it work with my personal Microsoft account?
No. Excel automations need a work or school account, with the workbook stored in OneDrive for Business or SharePoint.
What can ClickRuntime change in a workbook?
With `Files.ReadWrite` it can read tables, add and update rows, write a status into a column, move rows to another sheet and save a dated copy of the file. Use `Files.Read` instead if you only want alerts and summaries.
Should my data be in an Excel table?
It helps. Formatting a range as a table with headers like Name, Status or Date makes it easy to describe which column to watch or fill.
Can other tools add rows?
Yes. You get a link that adds a row with the fields sent to it, so a form, a script or another app can write straight into your table.
Is AI needed for Excel automations?
Most don't use it: new-row alerts, condition checks, totals and archiving are plain logic. The daily digest written from new rows uses the AI included in every ClickRuntime plan, so no AI key is needed.
Is this a Microsoft Excel connector for ChatGPT or Claude?
Not for chatting with Microsoft Excel data. A chat connector lets your assistant read and change Microsoft Excel while you're in the conversation. ClickRuntime is for the work that should happen without you: you set up an automation from the chat once, and it keeps running on a schedule or on each Microsoft Excel event.

Related pages

Keep exploring

Tell your assistant what Microsoft Excel should do

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