7 Best AI Automation Tools for Excel in 2026
Most Excel work is not analysis. It is upkeep. Someone emails a number and you paste it into the tracker, a form comes in and you add a row, the CRM changes and the forecast tab goes stale until you remember to refresh it. Excel automates what happens inside the file very well. Getting data into the file, from the places it actually lives, is where the hours go.
Below are seven tools that automate Excel with AI, ranked by how much of that upkeep they remove rather than how clever their formula help is.
TL;DR: The best AI automation tool for Excel for most people is Carly. It reads and updates your Excel workbooks and pulls the data from your email, calendar, and business tools on its own, with no macro or flow to write. For work inside the file, Copilot in Excel and Office Scripts. For piping outside data in yourself, Power Automate, Zapier, or Make.
1. Carly
Carly is an AI agent with its own real email address that connects to Excel and the tools your data comes from. You text or email it: “add every invoice from this week’s email to the payments tab,” “update the pipeline sheet from HubSpot every Monday at 8am,” “pull the numbers from this attachment into the Q3 tracker and tell me what changed.” It handles the fetching, the judgment, and the writing.
What makes it different: Everything else here either works inside the workbook or moves rows between two systems you picked in advance. Carly does the part in between. It reads the email or the attachment, decides which figures matter, and writes them into the right sheet, then follows up in Slack or your CRM if that is part of the job. Because it runs on a schedule as well as on request, the tracker is current when you open it rather than after you update it. Carly connects to thousands of apps, so the source of the data is rarely the blocker. See the best AI assistants for Excel.
Best for: Spreadsheets that need to stay current from data living somewhere else.
Pricing: Free Zapier-style workflows; AI agents from $35/month
2. Copilot in Excel
Copilot is Microsoft’s AI inside Excel. It writes formulas from a description, suggests charts, highlights trends, and answers questions about the data already in your sheet.
What makes it different from Carly: Copilot is genuinely useful for the analysis half of the job and it understands your workbook well. It works on what is already in the file, when you are in the file, and it will not go fetch this week’s invoices for you. Carly handles getting the data there in the first place.
Best for: Formulas, charts, and questions about data you already have.
Pricing: From ~$30/user/month on top of Microsoft 365
3. Office Scripts and Power Query
Office Scripts automate actions inside a workbook with recorded or hand-written TypeScript, and Power Query pulls and reshapes data from databases, files, and web sources on refresh.
What makes it different from Carly: Together they are the most capable native option, and both reward the time you put into them. Both also assume a technical owner and a stable source format. Carly deals with messy inputs like an email body or a PDF attachment, which is where most real data starts.
Best for: Repeatable in-file transformations with a technical owner.
Pricing: Included in Microsoft 365
4. Power Automate
Power Automate connects Excel to the rest of Microsoft 365 and hundreds of outside services. A common pattern is a flow that appends a row when a form is submitted or a mail arrives.
What makes it different from Carly: Power Automate is the native way to get outside data into a workbook, and it works, but you build and maintain every flow, and the Excel connector expects tidy tables and exact column matches. Carly works out where a value belongs instead of being told.
Best for: Microsoft-first teams automating structured, predictable inputs.
Pricing: Free tier; premium from ~$15/user/month
5. Zapier
Zapier links Excel to thousands of apps with trigger-action Zaps, most often to append rows from forms, payments, or CRM changes.
What makes it different from Carly: Zapier has the widest app coverage of anything here and is quick to set up for a single well-defined path. Each Zap only ever does what you configured, so one new data source means one new Zap. Carly takes the new source as part of the same request.
Best for: Pushing rows in from a long tail of other services.
Pricing: Free tier; paid from ~$20/month
6. Make
Make is a visual automation builder. On its canvas you can iterate over rows, branch on values, and handle errors with more precision than most tools allow.
What makes it different from Carly: Make is the better choice when the logic itself is the hard part and you want to see every branch. It is a tool you operate. Carly is one you hand the job to.
Best for: Complex row-level logic you want laid out visually.
Pricing: Free tier; paid from ~$9/month
7. n8n
n8n is an open-source automation platform you can self-host, with Excel and Microsoft 365 nodes and the option to drop custom code into a workflow.
What makes it different from Carly: n8n suits teams that need the data to stay on their own infrastructure and are willing to run the platform. Carly needs neither hosting nor workflow design.
Best for: Self-hosted spreadsheet automation.
Pricing: Free self-hosted; cloud from ~$24/month
Excel Automation Tools Compared
| Tool | Build required | Handles messy input | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carly | None, plain language | Yes, email bodies and attachments | Keeping a workbook current from outside data |
| Copilot in Excel | Prompt in the app | Within the file | Formulas, charts, and analysis |
| Office Scripts / Power Query | Scripting and query setup | Structured sources | In-file transformation |
| Power Automate | Full flow building | Structured sources | Native Microsoft data flows |
| Zapier | Zap per workflow | Structured sources | Wide app coverage |
| Make | Visual canvas | Structured sources | Complex row logic |
| n8n | Node graph, self-hosted | Structured sources | Self-hosted automation |
FAQ
Can AI update an Excel spreadsheet from my email automatically? Yes. Carly reads your Outlook or Gmail mailbox, pulls the figures out of a message or an attachment, and writes them into the right sheet without you copying anything across.
Do I need macros or VBA to automate Excel? No. Macros and Office Scripts are still the right tool for in-file transformations, but for getting data into the workbook from email, forms, or a CRM, Carly does it from a plain-language request.
How do I keep a spreadsheet in sync with my CRM? Ask Carly to refresh it on a schedule. It connects to CRMs including HubSpot, Salesforce, and Dynamics 365, so the sheet is current when you open it.
Is there a free way to automate Excel? Office Scripts and Power Query are included with Microsoft 365, and Carly includes free Zapier-style workflows. AI agents start at $35/month.
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"Before Carly, I relied on a Calendly link, but the whole process felt impersonal and not very professional. Carly changed that by handling all the back-and-forth, so I'm no longer stuck in endless email threads trying to line up schedules.
Now Carly reaches out to candidates, shares my real-time availability, lets them pick a slot, then sends a Zoom link and drops it straight into my calendar. She sends reminders to both of us before each call, which has significantly reduced no-shows and last-minute confusion.
On top of scheduling, Carly acts like a full executive assistant, sending me my schedule the night before so I can prepare for each call. It reminds me of the old x.ai assistant, but Carly is noticeably smarter, faster, and better suited to my healthcare recruitment business."
