Tips and Tricks of Working with Excel in UiPath

One of the biggest differences in UiPath, when working with Excel, is how you interact with the file. UiPath Studio, by default, allows you two options: using the Excel App Integration and using the System File Workbook option.

Although there appears to be no big difference between the two, there are quite a few aspects to consider. These are summarized in the table below:

Consideration	Yes	No
Do you have Excel installed?	Use either option. When using App Integration, interact with the application through the background option (set Visible equal to false)	Use the System > File > Workbook option as it does not require Excel to be installed to use it.
Do you have an Excel license?	Use either option. When using App Integration, interact with the application through the background option (set Visible equal to false)	Use the System > File > Workbook option as it does not require Excel to be licensed to use it.
Do you want to only import data to or export data from the file?	The normal, pre-installed libraries should suffice	Consider installing the BalaReva Easy Excel activity to do introduce more customised activities into your automation.
Do you want to customise the appearance of the spreadsheet?	Consider installing the BalaReva Easy Excel activity to do introduce more customised activities into your automation.	The normal, pre-installed libraries should suffice
Do you intend on joining two datasets, with either of the datasets containing 1000 records or more?	Consider using a database instead. Databases perform much better when joining data. UiPath iterates through each record and compares it to each record in the second table, resulting in higher operational and performance costs. Rather investigate using UDTTs or normal Stored Procedures in SQL before integrating it with UiPath. Here’s an explanation of how to implement the proposed solution.	The normal, pre-installed libraries should suffice
Do you need multiple instances of the file to be open?	Consider rather using SQL or Data Services. Alternatively, replicate the file. Keeping the files and their replications in sync is going to be a challenge.	The normal, pre-installed libraries should suffice

Keep the above in mind when considering how you’d like to interact with Excel to work with .csv or .xlsx files.

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