by sbroenne
Excel MCP Server & CLI - 23 tools, 214 operations for AI-powered Excel automation via COM API
# Add to your Claude Code skills
git clone https://github.com/sbroenne/mcp-server-excelGuides for using mcp servers skills like mcp-server-excel.
Last scanned: 5/30/2026
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}mcp-server-excel is an open-source mcp servers skill for AI coding assistants such as Claude Code, Codex CLI, and ChatGPT, built by sbroenne. Excel MCP Server & CLI - 23 tools, 214 operations for AI-powered Excel automation via COM API. It has 204 GitHub stars.
Yes. mcp-server-excel passed SkillsLLM's automated security scan — a dependency vulnerability audit plus prompt-injection heuristics — with no high-severity issues. You can read the full report in the Security Report section on this page.
Clone the repository with "git clone https://github.com/sbroenne/mcp-server-excel" and add it to your Claude Code skills directory (see the Installation section above).
mcp-server-excel is primarily written in C#. It is open-source under sbroenne on GitHub, so you can review or fork the full source.
Yes. SkillsLLM lists many other MCP Servers skills you can browse and compare side by side. Open the MCP Servers category from the badge at the top of this page, or use the Related Skills and comparison links further down to weigh mcp-server-excel against similar tools.
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Automate Excel with AI — A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for comprehensive Excel automation through conversational AI.
MCP Server for Excel enables AI assistants (GitHub Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT) to automate Excel through natural language commands. Automate Power Query, DAX measures, VBA macros, PivotTables, Charts, formatting, and data transformations (25 tools with 230 operations).
🛡️ 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:
25 specialized tools with 230 operations:
📚 Complete Feature Reference → - Detailed documentation of all 230 operations
Create & Populate Data:
Analysis & Visualization:
Formatting & Styling:
Formatting split: number display formats use the range tool, while visual styling and auto-fit use range_format.
Automation:
🪟 Agent Mode — Watch AI Work in Excel:
Perfect for:
Not suitable for:
| 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.
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:
excel-cli plugin for skill guidance, then install excelcli separatelyexcel-cli skill separately when your agent already has excelcli available on PATH⚡ 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.
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 workflowsexcel-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.
| 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