Excel Cli

A full-featured CLI for automating Excel on Windows with 50+ commands covering everything from basic range operations to Power Query, DAX measures, and pivot tables. The batch mode is the standout feature here: when you need to execute 10+ operations, you can send them all in one process launch instead of spawning Excel repeatedly. It's token-efficient by design, which matters for coding agents hitting context limits. The workflow is COM-based so it only works on Windows, but if you're already in that environment and need scriptable Excel for CI/CD pipelines or scheduled jobs, this beats opening the GUI or wrestling with openpyxl's limitations on complex workbooks.

skills.sh installs: 1K
GitHub stars: 878
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add sbroenne/mcp-server-excel --skill excel-cli --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

excelcli quick start

If excelcli is not on PATH, run this plugin's bin\start-cli.ps1 by its full path with the same arguments.

The routine: about three calls

Open and look in one batch. Start the batch with session.open; later entries in the same batch use that workbook automatically. Read what you need to plan, such as sheet.list, table.list and range.get-used-range. The result of session.open gives the sessionId. Before editing, check its autoSaveOn and warning: Excel may save edits automatically.
Change and check in one batch with --session <sessionId> --stop-on-error. Put the writes first, then reads of the cells you changed, so one result shows that the change worked.
Save and close: session close --session <sessionId> --save, only after step 2's reads look right. Closing without --save discards only unsaved edits; it cannot undo changes already saved by AutoSave.

SKILL.md on GitHub

Details

Repository: github.com/sbroenne/mcp-server-excel
Categories: Backend & APIs, DevOps & CI/CD, AI & Agent Building, Automation & Workflows, CLI & Terminal, Office & Documents
First seen: Apr 16, 2026