Excel Automation: Easily Automate Spreadsheet Tasks

It’s undeniable that Excel is among the best solutions for businesses when it comes to storing, managing, and visualizing data for better decision-making. The release of Microsoft Office 365 increased the offer of automation tools, making all tasks related to data treatment faster and easier to achieve. If you work with large datasets or need to create inventories from scratch, it’s crucial that you learn how Excel automation works.

In this article, you’ll learn how to automate tasks in Excel spreadsheets using automation tools within your spreadsheet. This will include VBA Macros as well as integrated applications, such as Power Automate. Alternatively, Layer can be used as an automation tool that works on top of your spreadsheets, so you can boost any business process, all from a single platform.

What can you use Excel Automation for?

Automating Excel spreadsheets is not only easy to learn but will have a significant impact on your team’s productivity level. Let’s say you need to update your inventory or your sales commission figures regularly. These processes are just some of the many you can automate in Excel. Following are some examples of the most common tasks you can automate in Excel.

Excel Automation examples

• High-volume data input
• Data entry forms creation
• New files creation
• Data format and style modifications
• Refresh data
• External data source connections

You’ll now learn how to automate two very common spreadsheet tasks in Excel; refreshing data and external data source connections.

How to automate Excel spreadsheets?

The first example illustrates how to refresh data via a macro. This is especially useful in case your day-to-day work involves high-volume data that needs to be refreshed regularly. This is how you can automate updating or refreshing data in Excel.

How to automate Excel spreadsheets using VBA Macros?

Before automating any task, ensure you enable direct access to VBA in your Ribbon toolbar. If it’s not currently there, you’ll need to enable the “Developer” tab to access the VBA and Macros features.

Add Developer tab, including VBA and Macros features

1. 1. Click on the drop-down arrow and select “More Commands…” as shown below.

1. 2. Select “Customize Ribbon” from the left-side menu and then “Main Tabs” from the “Customize the Ribbon” drop-down menu to the right.

1. 3. Select the “Developer” option and then “OK” to enable it in your toolbar.

Now that the “Developer” tab is enabled, you’ll see a basic example of refreshing data automatically using Macros. To make the following steps easier, make sure you save the file as a macro-enabled spreadsheet with the “.xlsm” format.

How to refresh data in Excel using VBA Macros?

Macros are basically user-generated functions that are executed in VBA. It’s usually the case that we need to refresh data automatically to always have access to information in real time. For example, if you use a PivotTable for quick reporting, then you want to make sure that the reports provide the most recent data. This is how you can create a macro to refresh the information ‌in your PivotTable.

1. 1. Go to your new “Developer” tab and select “Record Macro”.

1. 2. Enter the name of the Macro. Here, I’ll use "RefreshChartA". Click “OK” to continue.

1. 3. Click on the “VBA” button from your “Developer” tab and adapt the following code according to your sheet and macro names:

Private Sub Sheet1(data)
Call RefreshChartA
End Sub
Sub RefreshChartA()
ActiveSheet.ChartObjects("ChartA").Activate
ActiveChart.PivotLayout.PivotTable.PivotCache.Refresh
End Sub

1. 4. Click on the “Play” green icon in VBA and then select the macro you just created. Then, click “Run” to execute the macro.

1. 5. To check that it works, apply any change to the PivotTable to see how it reflects in the sheet containing the Chart. For example, here, I’ll remove the last row.

1. 6. Head over to the sheet containing the chart, and it should automatically reflect the change made.

Macros can be used for many spreadsheet purposes, from automated updates to synching data. However, there are other Excel automation methods that work without Macros, such as creating “Flows” in Power Automate.

How to automate Excel spreadsheets using Power Automate?

Power Automate is a platform where you can create all types of workflows to automate connections and specific data transfers between Microsoft applications. The great thing is you don’t need to use a single line of code and can set up your workflow from scratch or use among the many templates made available on the platform.

Here, you’ll see how to set up a template to create a row in another spreadsheet based on a specific row.

1. 1. Launch Power Automate and click on “Templates”.

1. 2. Enter “Create a row in another spreadsheet for a selected row” to automate synchronization tasks between two spreadsheets. Click “Continue” to edit your template.

1. 3. You’ll see two boxes corresponding to each dataset that you’ll synchronize. You simply need to click on the field and choose the file location from the drop-down menu.

1. 4. The second box contains the information related to the table that will be updated, so you’ll need to provide further information on the type of data to add. As soon as you click on the fields, you’ll be prompted to enter the values from the available options to the right. Click “Save” to finish.

Once you save your created flow, it’s important to test it to ensure that it works correctly. You can do this by clicking on the “Test” button in the top-right corner. Alternatively, Layer presents many options to automate your business processes, all without having to leave the same platform.

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Conclusion

Any spreadsheet user knows how many small but time-consuming tasks are necessary when working with databases. These not only take up most of your time, but they also absorb your focus from other more critical tasks. Automation tools such as VBA Macros or Power Automate save you from having to perform manual tasks related to data treatment and allow you to concentrate on data analysis.

You should now know how to automate tasks in Excel spreadsheets using VBA Macros or Power Automate. From updating information within a single workbook to synchronizing data between two spreadsheets, Microsoft Office 365 has become a powerful automation tool. Alternatively, Layer also works on top of your spreadsheets, so you can also perform any automation action without the need to learn code and in just a few clicks.