🛡️ 100% Safe - Uses Excel's Native COM API - Zero risk of file corruption. Unlike third-party libraries that manipulate .xlsx files directly, this project uses Excel's official API ensuring complete safety and compatibility.

💡 Interactive Development - See results instantly in Excel. Create a query, run it, inspect the output, refine and repeat. Excel becomes your AI-powered workspace for rapid development and testing.

🧪 LLM-Tested Quality - Tool behavior validated with real LLM workflows using pytest-skill-engineering. We test that LLMs correctly understand and use our tools.

Technical Requirements:

• ⚠️ Windows Only - COM interop is Windows-specific
• ⚠️ Excel Required - Microsoft Excel 2016 or later must be installed
• ⚠️ Desktop Environment - Controls actual Excel process (not for server-side processing)

🎯 What You Can Do

25 specialized tools with 230 operations:

• 🔄 Power Query (1 tool, 12 ops) - Atomic workflows, M code management, load destinations
• 📊 Data Model/DAX (2 tools, 19 ops) - Measures, relationships, model structure
• 🎨 Excel Tables (2 tools, 27 ops) - Lifecycle, filtering, sorting, structured references
• 📈 PivotTables (3 tools, 30 ops) - Creation, fields, aggregations, calculated members/fields
• 📉 Charts (2 tools, 29 ops) - Create, configure, series, formatting, data labels, trendlines
• 📝 VBA (1 tool, 6 ops) - Modules, execution, version control
• 📋 Ranges (4 tools, 46 ops) - Values, formulas, formatting, validation, protection
• 📄 Worksheets (2 tools, 16 ops) - Lifecycle, colors, visibility, cross-workbook moves
• 🔌 Connections (1 tool, 9 ops) - OLEDB/ODBC management and refresh
• 🏷️ Named Ranges (1 tool, 6 ops) - Parameters and configuration
• 📁 Files (1 tool, 6 ops) - Session management, workbook creation, IRM/AIP-protected file support
• 🧮 Calculation Mode (1 tool, 3 ops) - Get/set calculation mode and trigger recalculation
• 🎚️ Slicers (1 tool, 8 ops) - Interactive filtering for PivotTables and Tables
• 🎨 Conditional Formatting (1 tool, 2 ops) - Rules and clearing
• 📸 Screenshot (1 tool, 2 ops) - Capture ranges/sheets as PNG for LLM visual verification
• 🪧 Window Management (1 tool, 9 ops) - Show/hide Excel, arrange, position, status bar feedback

📚 Complete Feature Reference → - Detailed documentation of all 230 operations

💬 Example Prompts

Create & Populate Data:

• "Create a new Excel file called SalesTracker.xlsx with a table for Date, Product, Quantity, Unit Price, and Total with sample data"
• "Put this data in A1:C4 - Name, Age, City / Alice, 30, Seattle / Bob, 25, Portland"
• "Add a formula column that calculates Quantity times Unit Price"

Analysis & Visualization:

• "Create a PivotTable from this data showing total sales by Product, then add a bar chart"
• "Use Power Query to import products.csv, load it to the Data Model, and create a measure for Total Revenue"
• "Create a slicer for the Region field so I can filter the PivotTable interactively"
• "Create a relationship between the Orders and Products tables using ProductID"

Formatting & Styling:

• "Format the Price column as currency and highlight values over $500 in green"
• "Convert this range to an Excel Table with a blue style and add a totals row"
• "Make the headers bold with a dark background and auto-fit column widths"
• "Apply the same section-header styling to A1:G1, A12:G12, and A24:G24 in one step"

Formatting split: number display formats use the range tool, while visual styling and auto-fit use range_format.

Automation:

• "Export all Power Query M code to files for version control"
• "Run the UpdatePrices macro"
• "Show me Excel while you work" - watch changes in real-time

🪟 Agent Mode — Watch AI Work in Excel:

• "Show me Excel side-by-side while you build this dashboard" - real-time visibility
• "Let me watch while you create the chart" - AI asks your preference, then shows Excel
• Status bar shows live progress: "ExcelMcp: Building PivotTable from Sales data..."

👥 Who Should Use This?

Perfect for:

• ✅ Data analysts automating repetitive Excel workflows
• ✅ Developers building Excel-based data solutions
• ✅ Business users managing complex Excel workbooks
• ✅ Teams maintaining Power Query/VBA/DAX code in Git

Not suitable for:

• ❌ Server-side data processing (use libraries like ClosedXML, EPPlus instead)
• ❌ Linux/macOS users (Windows + Excel installation required)
• ❌ High-volume batch operations (consider Excel-free alternatives)

🚀 Quick Start

| Platform | Installation | |----------|-------------| | VS Code | Install Extension (one-click, recommended) | | Claude Desktop | Download .mcpb from latest release | | Any MCP Client | Download mcp-excel.exe from latest release and add to PATH | | Details | 📖 Installation Guide |

⚠️ Important: Close all Excel files before using. The server requires exclusive access to workbooks during automation.

🔧 CLI vs MCP Server

This package provides both CLI and MCP Server interfaces. Choose based on your use case:

| Interface | Best For | Why | |-----------|----------|-----| | CLI (excelcli) | Coding agents (Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf) + Scripting | 64% fewer tokens - single tool, no large schemas. Auto-generated from Core code, ensuring 1:1 feature parity. Bundled with excel-cli skill. | | MCP Server | Conversational AI (Claude Desktop, VS Code Chat) | Rich tool discovery, persistent connection. Better for interactive, exploratory workflows. |

Installation:

• CLI via Copilot plugin (Recommended for Copilot CLI): Install the excel-cli plugin for skill guidance, then install excelcli separately
• CLI Standalone: Download ZIP from releases or install via NuGet
• Skill only: Install the excel-cli skill separately when your agent already has excelcli available on PATH
• MCP Server: Download from releases or install VS Code Extension

⚡ CLI Commands: Generated automatically from Core service definitions using Roslyn source generators. All 22 command categories maintain exact 1:1 parity with MCP tools through shared code generation. See code generation docs for details.

📦 GitHub Copilot Plugins

ExcelMcp is available as two GitHub Copilot CLI plugins in the Copilot plugin marketplace:

# Register the plugin marketplace (one-time)
copilot plugin marketplace add sbroenne/mcp-server-excel-plugins

# Install one or both plugins
copilot plugin install excel-mcp@mcp-server-excel-plugins      # For conversational AI
copilot plugin install excel-cli@mcp-server-excel-plugins      # For scripting / coding agents

• excel-mcp — MCP server for conversational workflows
• excel-cli — Skill for coding agents (install excelcli separately if you want the CLI tool)

Note: After each release, there may be a short delay before plugins appear in the marketplace. You may need to wait a few moments for updates to sync.

📖 Full Installation Guide →

| Metric | CLI | MCP Server | Winner | |--------|-----|------------|--------| | Tokens | ~59K | ~163K | 🏆 CLI (64% fewer) |

Key insight: MCP sends 23 tool schemas to the LLM on each request (~100K+ tokens).

Manual Installation:

# Primary: Download standalone executables from latest release (no .NET runtime required)
# https://github.com/sbroenne/mcp-server-excel/releases/latest
# - ExcelMcp-MCP-Server-{version}-windows.zip → extract mcp-excel.exe
# - ExcelMcp-CLI-{version}-windo