5 Key Strategies and Examples to Automate Tasks in Excel

Manually interacting with your Excel data leads to error-prone results and wasted time. However, with Excel automation, you can streamline repetitive tasks—from simple data entry to complex analysis—and uncover insights from huge volumes of data.

In this article, we’ll cover different ways to automate Excel, show examples of automation, and discuss popular use cases.

5 Powerful Ways to Automate Excel

While there are various Excel automation methods, the commonly used and least technical ones include:

1. Macros and VBA (Visual Basic for Application) 

Macro and VBA are automation tools for streamlining repetitive tasks such as cell formatting, data copying, or data entry within Excel and other Microsoft Office applications. Though they serve similar functions and are used interchangeably, they’re distinct in creation and capability. 

Macros are the no-code version of VBA, which is Microsoft’s programming language. Macros are created using the Macro Recorder feature in Excel to capture actions and are run using custom keyboard shortcuts or through the developer toolbar. 

For instance, if you import a dataset with file name extensions (like .pdf and .xlsx) you can create Macros to automatically remove the extensions by following these steps:

1. Record Macro: Go to the "View" tab in Excel. Click on "Macros" and select "Record Macro." Name your macro, assign a shortcut key, and choose where to store it. Click "OK" to start recording.
2. Perform Text-to-Columns: Select the range of cells containing the file names. Go to the "Data" tab and click "Text to Columns." Choose "Delimited" and enter "." as the delimiter. Click "Finish" to split the file names into two columns.
3. Remove Extension Column: Select the column containing the file extensions. Right-click on the column header and choose "Delete."
4. Stop Recording: Go back to the "View" tab. Click on "Macros" and select "Stop Recording."

After recording the macro, you can use your shortcut key to run it whenever you need to remove file extensions from your data. 

On the back-end, however, Excel automatically translates macros into VBA code which you can view, edit, and customize in the VBA editor.

Hence, while recording macros is simple and requires no programming knowledge, VBA provides greater flexibility for more complex and customized automation.

2. Power query

Power Query is a no-code add-on in Excel that automates tasks like importing, cleaning, and transforming data from diverse sources including CSV, JSON, PDF, SharePoint, and SQL. 

Available as a built-in feature called “Get and Transform” in Excel 2016 and newer versions, power query has a user-friendly interface. It records your transformation steps which you can reuse by copying and pasting from the advanced editor into a new file. 

3. Workflow integration tools

Microsoft's integration tool—Power Automate and third-party integration tools like Zapier and Make can connect Excel with other apps to automate workflows. For example, you can create a Zap (Zapier’s automated workflow) to automatically send an email when a new row is added to an Excel table.

4. Formulas and functions 

Excel's formulas and functions are powerful tools for automating calculations, data processing, and analysis. They start with an equal sign (=) followed by a combination of operators, cell references, and functions. For example, you can sum up a range of numbers using the formula “=SUM(A1:A10)”

5. Automation using Docupilot integration

Do you create many documents with repetitive content with only a few portions of the document you fill using real-time data from Excel? For example, you might need a standard offer letter for all new employees, but personalize it with details like the candidate's name, address, contact information, and employment type.

With Docupilot, you create a template to generate dynamic documents.

For instance, suppose you have a new candidate’s data (like name, contact and employment type) in Excel Sheets. To send them an offer letter, you can integrate Excel Sheets to a document automation tool like Docupilot to pull each candidate's data from Excel, fill your offer letter template, and generate personalized offer letters in bulk.

To start using Docupilot, sign up and follow these steps:

1. Create a Template: Click the "Create Template" button to draft your template from scratch using the rich word editor, or import an existing one.

2. Add Merge Fields: Edit your template to include merge fields where you want Excel data to be inserted. These fields act as placeholders for dynamic content such as personal data, tables, lists of items, or conditional statements.

3. Prepare Excel Data: Organize your data in Excel, ensuring that each column corresponds to a merge field in your template and each row represents a set of data for a document.

4. Connect Excel Data: In Docupilot, go to the "Create Bulk Document" section and integrate Docupilot with Excel using Zapier or Make.

5. Generate Documents: Once your template is configured and connected to your Excel data, Docupilot will merge the data from Excel into the template and automatically generate documents whenever you add new data to your spreadsheet.

6. Delivery: Set up automation rules or integrate Docupilot with other tools and platforms to streamline your document generation process further.

The best part about using Docupilot is that you're not restricted to Excel data—you can integrate with any of your data sources. Additionally, you can use it to create various documents with repetitive content, including invoices, sales letters, contracts, and more.

Try Docupilot's free Excel to PDF Converter

4 Practical Examples of Excel Automation

Here are practical examples of Excel automation to help you get started:

Data exportation

Whether you want to share your Excel data directly with team members or clients, analyze it in tools like Power BI, or store and incorporate it in other business tools for further processing, automation can quicken the process, minimize the errors associated with copying and pasting and allow real time data up. For example:

• Inter-Microsoft Tool Exportation: If you need to send a table to a client and want them to access it in Word, you can create a VBA code that automatically transfers the table from Excel to Word. This also applies to Access and PowerPoint.

An easier alternative is to use copy and paste but instead of simply pasting, use the "Paste Special" dialogue box in Word and select the "Microsoft Excel Worksheet Object", choose “paste link” and click ok. This will import your Excel table with all the formatting and formulas intact. Changes made to the Excel sheet will then reflect in the Word document.

• Exporting to Third-Party Tools: Like with Docupilot automation, you can use Zapier integration to export Excel data into any third party tool of your choice.

Data importation

Do you use Excel to collect form data, scrape web data, or import data from multiple sources for a unified view? Automate it with Power Query. 

For instance, you manage daily reports for a cookie company with six branches. To compile the data into a single Excel report, follow these steps:

1. Create a folder named "Sales Reports" to store daily files from each branch.
2. Open Excel and go to the Data tab. Select Get Data > From File > From Folder. Browse to the "Sales Reports" folder and click OK.
3. Power Query will list all files in the folder. Click Combine > Combine & Load. Select the worksheet containing the data (e.g. "Sheet1"). Ensure all files have the same sheet name. Click OK to load the combined data into Excel.
4. To update the data daily, replace the old files in the "Sales Reports" folder with the new day's files. In Excel, right-click the data table and select Refresh.
5. If a new branch is added, place its file in the "Sales Reports" folder. Right-click the data table in Excel and select Refresh to include the recent data.

This process automates importing and updating data in Excel for more efficient reporting. 

Data formatting 

Having to highlight cells or adjust colors for datasets with thousands of rows and multiple columns isn't only boring but stressful. With conditional formatting or macros, these tasks are a click from done. Conditional formatting automatically applies simple formatting like colors, fonts, and icons to cells based on specific criteria. For the cookie company data, you can:

• Highlight cells with sales greater than $1000 in green
• Use color scales to represent values from low to high
• Apply data bars to visualize the magnitude of numbers

Data cleaning

Anaconda’s State of Data Science reports revealed that data cleaning is the most time-consuming task when working with data. This tedious process, when done manually, is prone to errors that can negatively impact business decisions. However, with Power Query, you can create and record your cleaning steps once and reuse them for any data with a similar format. Here’s how to use Power Query for some common data-cleaning tasks:

• Remove Duplicates: In the power query editor, select the "Branch Name" column. Go to "Home" tab and click "Remove Rows" > "Remove Duplicates" to remove duplicate branch names.
• Filter Data: Filter out any rows with missing or invalid data (e.g. empty cells, errors) by clicking on the filter icon in each column header and selecting the appropriate options.
• Data Transformation: Standardize the date format by selecting the "Date" column and using the "Transform" tab to format dates as desired (e.g. YYYY-MM-DD). 
• Aggregate Data: Aggregate the data to a higher level if needed (e.g. monthly total sales per branch). Use the "Group By" feature to group the data by branch name and date, and sum the total sales.

Suggested read:

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Business Use Cases of Excel Automation 

The use of Excel automation spans different business teams and workflows including: 

Sales report generation 

With integration, you don’t have to share raw sales data directly from Excel. You can integrate it with sales report generation tools using Zapier, and transform your data into a narration that provides context for your recipients.

For instance, for the cookie company sales report mentioned in the data importation section, you can automatically create a sales report summary using Docupilot after updating each day’s sales data. 

To do this, create your sales report summary template with a table containing dynamic fields in Docupilot. Then, set up a Zapier workflow that auto-fills your table with the unique dataset whenever you refresh your daily sales data in Excel.

Human Resources Tasks

If your HR team still uses Excel because of familiarity or cost-effectiveness, automation will help you make the best use of it and limit the pressure to use HR tools when you’re not ready. 

For example, you can integrate Excel with Docupilot to auto generate HR documents like employee contract, promotion letters, termination letters, rejection letters and more. 

You can also use functions like “NETWORKDAYS” and “DATEDIF” to automate timesheets to calculate working hours, overtime, and leaves. 

Legal Tasks 

One way to choke the bandwidth of your legal team is to have them spend all day creating repetitive legal documents instead of handling cases. However, you can improve their productivity with various Excel automation techniques. For example:

• Create a contract template in Docupilot that pulls client-specific data from an Excel sheet using Zapier or Make. This automation personalizes contracts for each client without manual data entry.
• Set up conditional formatting to highlight cases with upcoming deadlines in red. This visual alert ensures you don’t miss important cases and makes it easy to prioritize tasks.
• Create a time-tracking sheet with formulas to auto-calculate total billable hours based on start and end times. This simplifies billing and ensures accurate tracking of attorney hours.

Improve Efficiency with Excel Automation

Excel may seem outdated if you use it manually, but you can supercharge its capabilities through various automation methods. You’ll be surprised by how much time you save and the quality insights you can uncover from your data. 

If you appreciate how easily Excel integrates with Docupilot for automatic document generation, sign up for free and try it out.