First-party app
Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel

Read and write Microsoft Excel workbooks stored in OneDrive for Business or SharePoint, via the Microsoft Graph workbook API.

stable SpreadsheetsProductivity

About

Microsoft Excel ships in the w6w first-party pack. It declares 16 actions, 2 health checks, and the host runs its code in a sandbox that never sees the credential.

App id
io.w6w.excel
Version
0.1.2
Author
w6w
Licence
MIT
Categories
Spreadsheets · Productivity

Overview

Excel puts a shared workbook into a workflow’s reach — pulling data out of it or writing results back — using the Microsoft Graph workbook API, the same surface OneDrive for Business and SharePoint serve to Excel Online itself.

A workbook is located by item id or file path, and then its worksheets, ranges, tables and charts become directly readable and writable: pull or overwrite a range, add or remove a worksheet, create a table and append rows to it in a single batch, or render a chart to an image for a report. A session keeps a multi-step run fast and lets a workflow discard scratch changes rather than always saving to the live file.

It fits reporting and data-entry workflows that already live in a shared workbook — updating a tracker, appending rows from another system, or pulling a used range into the rest of an automation — for a work or school Microsoft account (personal OneDrive is not supported by this API).

Build with Microsoft Excel

Three routes to the same 16 actions. The Workflow tab is generated from Microsoft Excel's own manifest and carries its real ids, so it is copy-pasteable; the Code and CLI examples are the same call for any action on any app, so every app-specific value in them is a blank you fill in.

Add Table

add-table

Turn a range of cells into an Excel table.

Add Table Rows

add-table-rows

Append one or more rows to an Excel table. Batch them into a single call — Microsoft's own guidance.

Add Worksheet

add-worksheet

Add a worksheet to the end of a workbook.

Clear Range

clear-range

Clear a range's contents, its formatting, or both.

Close Session

close-session

Close a workbook session. Releases the server-side workbook copy immediately instead of waiting out the inactivity timeout.

Create Session

create-session

Open a workbook session and return its id for the `workbook-session-id` header. Persistent sessions save changes; non-persistent ones discard them on expiry.

Delete Worksheet

delete-worksheet

Delete a worksheet and everything on it. There is no undo.

Get Chart Image

get-chart-image

Render a worksheet chart to a base64-encoded PNG — for embedding in a report, an email or a Slack message.

Get Range

get-range

Read a range of cells — values, display text, formulas, number formats and value types.

Get Used Range

get-used-range

Read the smallest range covering the worksheet's actual data — the practical 'read the whole sheet'.

List Table Rows

list-table-rows

Read the data rows of an Excel table, in pages.

List Tables

list-tables

List the tables in a workbook, or just those on one worksheet, with their ids and names.

List Workbooks

list-workbooks

Find Excel workbooks in the signed-in user's drive and return their driveItem ids, so the other actions have something to address.

List Worksheets

list-worksheets

List the worksheets in a workbook, with their ids, positions and visibility.

Update Range

update-range

Write values, formulas and/or number formats into a range of cells. `null` inside a grid skips that cell; `""` clears it.

Update Worksheet

update-worksheet

Rename, reposition or change the visibility of a worksheet.

A workflow step names the app and the action, and the editor fills in the connection when you pick one. This is the Step shape from the workflow spec, carrying Microsoft Excel's real ids.

{
  "manifestVersion": "2",
  "name": "excel-example",
  "steps": [
    {
      "id": "add-table",
      "uses": {
        "app": "io.w6w.excel",
        "action": "add-table",
        "connection": "conn_YOUR_CONNECTION_ID"
      },
      "with": {
        "address": "<address>"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Here are some of the things you can do

  • Add Table

    perform
    add-table
  • Add Table Rows

    perform
    add-table-rows
  • Add Worksheet

    perform
    add-worksheet
  • Clear Range

    perform
    clear-range
  • Create Session

    perform
    create-session

+11 more actions available

Every app-specific value here is a blank you have to fill in. An app action is reached through the connection that authenticates it, so the address is a connection id, not the app id — and connections belong to your account, so a public page cannot know yours. Create one for Microsoft Excel, then fill in the three blanks: conn_YOUR_CONNECTION_ID, the action key, and the parameters that action declares. The call itself is real — the shape is transcribed from the studio's own snippet builder, which prints the same kind of blanks — but nothing in it is specific to Microsoft Excel. The Workflow tab is where this app's real ids are.

Install
npm install @w6w/sdk
yarn add @w6w/sdk
pnpm add @w6w/sdk
deno add npm:@w6w/sdk
Code
import { W6wClient, isActionRun } from "@w6w/sdk";

// Reads W6W_BASE_URL and W6W_TOKEN from the environment when omitted.
const client = new W6wClient();

const envelope = await client.run({
  urn: "conn_YOUR_CONNECTION_ID",
  action: "update-range",
  payload: {
    // itemId: "<value>",
    // itemPath: "<value>",
    worksheet: "<value>",
    address: "<value>",
    // values: "<value>",
    // formulas: "<value>",
    // numberFormat: "<value>",
    // sessionId: "<value>",
  },
});

if (isActionRun(envelope)) console.log(envelope.value);
Install the CLI
npm install -g @w6w/cli
CLI
w6w run conn_YOUR_CONNECTION_ID --action update-range --payload '{"worksheet":"<value>","address":"<value>"}'

Give an AI agent Microsoft Excel — without giving it Microsoft Excel's credentials. One MCP endpoint exposes every app, function and workflow the caller is entitled to, as tools it can discover and run. Access is granted per team while we onboard.

One tool call
{
  "name": "w6w_invoke",
  "arguments": {
    "ref": "app:io.w6w.excel#add-table",
    "input": {
      "address": "<address>"
    }
  }
}

Every tool names its target with a single ref. The app: form above doesn't name a connection at all — the host resolves which of the caller's Microsoft Excel connections to sign with, and refuses rather than guesses when the answer is ambiguous.

What the agent gets

Credentials it can't read

The token is attached host-side, at the moment of the call. It is never a tool argument, never in the model's context, and never in a transcript — so a prompt injection has nothing to exfiltrate.

A tool surface scoped to the caller

Tools are derived per end user from what that person has actually connected and is entitled to — not one shared bot identity carrying the union of everyone's access.

A durable workflow in one call

Multi-step work runs on the workflow engine and returns a run handle the agent can poll — retries, branching and state survive the conversation that started them.

Health-aware discovery

Microsoft Excel's declared health checks are on the surface too, so an agent can tell "the vendor is down" from "your credential expired" before it burns a retry on either.

The MCP surface is part of the hosted platform. Microsoft Excel itself is MIT, and the runtime that executes it is source-available (FSL).

Request MCP access

Health checks

Microsoft Excel declares its own checks, so its health is a property of the app rather than something the host guesses at.

service

Excel platform status

quota

API quota headroom

Resource units remaining in the current SharePoint Online one-minute window, read off the IETF `RateLimit-*` headers. Those headers appear only once the app passes 80% of that limit, so their absence is itself the healthy answer.