The Desktop Automation workflow includes built-in Excel driver that helps you perform some operations on Excel spreadsheets.

To create a new Excel spreadsheet, insert the Excel step and select Create File in the Action list.

To open an existing Excel spreadsheet, insert the Excel step and select Open File in the Action list and type the full path to the spreadsheet. For example, excel://c:/documents/myspreadsheet.xlsx.

Note that Kofax RPA can create a spreadsheet with only one worksheet. When you open a spreadsheet with several worksheets, you can navigate between them by clicking a button for the respective worksheet. Chart sheets do not contain elements that can be manipulated by a robot and are therefore not shown in the tree of the editor. The Chart sheets are included when the spreadsheet is saved.

Use toolbar buttons in the built-in Excel driver to perform the following operations.

Select cells

You can select one or more cells in the worksheet as follows.

• To select one cell in the worksheet, click it just as you would do in a desktop version of Microsoft Excel.
• To select a row, click the row heading.
• To select a column, click the column heading.
• To select the entire worksheet, click Select All .
• To select a range of cells in a worksheet, use arrows with Shift in the Press Key. Note that selection is made from left to right and from top to bottom. You cannot select cells by moving your selection up and from right to left.

  For example, to select a range that is five cells wide and three cells in height, do the following.

  1. Click a cell located at the top left corner of your range.
  2. Insert the Press Key step. In the step, specify excel as the application name in the finder, select the Right Arrow in the Standard Keys, select Shift as the key modifier, and enter 4 in the Count field.
  3. Execute the step.
  4. Insert the Press Key step. In the step, specify excel as the application name in the finder, select the Down Arrow in the Standard Keys, select Shift as the key modifier, and enter 2 in the Count field.
  5. Execute the step.

  As a result, you should see the selected range of cells in your worksheet.

Change color

To use color changing actions, first either select a color in the Color Picker or specify a custom color in the Custom color input. To specify a custom color, click the text area in the Custom color input, enter the required color in hex format, and click Set. Once the active color is set, use "Set text color" or "Set background color" actions.

Clipboard operations

The built-in Excel driver is designed to be used in robots running on RoboServer instances. Do not use Windows Clipboard in the built-in Excel driver, because the clipboard is shared between all running robots. To copy content within an Excel document, use the Mark to copy and Paste buttons on the toolbar.

Important You can only copy and paste between sheets within the same Excel document. If you have more than one Excel documents opened, you cannot copy from one and paste into the other.

If you cut or copy information from an Excel document, the information is not copied to the clipboard and the "Extract clipboard" step does not provide the content you just cut or copied from an Excel sheet.

Freeze Tree operations

You can work with spreadsheets using Excel driver within the Freeze Tree group step. This helps you perform cell loops faster and create a more efficient robot. To use the Excel driver within the Freeze Tree step, insert the Freeze Tree step in your workflow and then insert the Open step that calls the Excel driver as described in this topic.