Read Excel files

Description

The Read Excel Files activity extracts tabular data from Excel spreadsheets (.xlsx format). It supports reading data from a specific sheet, interpreting headers, and can fetch files either from the output of a previous activity or directly from the workflow directory based on your configuration.

This activity is essential for workflows involving uploaded reports, forms, or structured data sources prepared in Excel.

Use this activity to:

• Ingest Excel files submitted via form or upload
• Parse structured data for transformation or validation
• Load data from spreadsheets for further automation

Use case: A manager uploads a performance report in Excel format every week. This activity reads the sheet named “Weekly Summary”, interprets the first row as headers, and passes the data to the next step for KPI evaluation.

Input

Type	Description
Files	Excel files (.xlsx) provided either by a prior activity or from the workflow directory.

Output

Output Type	Format	Description
Data	Table	Parsed Excel data as tabular output.

Configuration Fields

Field Name	Description
Read From Previous Activity	Toggle switch that determines the file source: Enabled – Reads Excel files passed from the previous activity. Disabled – Requires an input file pattern to read from the workflow directory.
Input File Pattern	(Visible only when Read From Previous Activity is Disabled) Defines the file name or pattern (e.g., data_*.xlsx) used to locate Excel files in the workflow directory.
Sheet Name	The name of the worksheet to extract data from. Only the specified sheet will be read.
Has Header Record	Determines if the first row of the sheet is treated as column headers: Enabled – First row is used as column names. Disabled – Columns are named Field1, Field2, etc.

Only .xlsx files are supported. If the specified sheet is not found, the activity may fail unless error handling is applied downstream.

Sample Input

Not Applicable

Sample Configuration

Field	Value
Read From Previous Activity	Enabled
Sheet Name	Weekly Report
Has Header Record	Enabled

If Read From Previous Activity is set to Disabled, set Input File Pattern to a value like performance_*.xlsx.

Sample Output

Name	Department	Score	Status
Alice	HR	85	Passed
Bob	Sales	78	Passed
Charlie	IT	62	Pending

The output will include all rows from the specified sheet, excluding the header row if Has Header Record is enabled.