Launch Excel

Excel spreadsheets are used to store and analyze large amounts of structured data. Robomotion offers a dedicated group of nodes to automate basic tasks in Excel spreadsheets, such as launching them.

What Launch Excel can do

• Download Fixtures subflow then Build Default Path (Core.Programming.Function) sets msg.default_excel_path = $Home$/templates/excel-automation/launch-excel/fixtures/sample.xlsx and initialises msg.retry_count = 0.
• Core.Dialog.InputBox titled Launch Excel prompts Select the excel file... with that default → msg.selected_file.
• Validate (Core.Programming.Function, outputs: 2) — requires msg.selected_file to match /\.xl\w*$/i (covers .xls, .xlsx, .xlsm, .xlsb); otherwise falls through to Core.Flow.Stop.
• Robomotion.MicrosoftExcel.OpenExcel opens msg.selected_file with optVisible: true and returns msg.excel_app_id.
• Core.Trigger.Catch around the open — on failure it increments msg.retry_count, sleeps 2s via Core.Programming.Sleep, and Core.Flow.GoTo jumps back to the Retry Point label; after one retry it stops with failed and reason Excel open failed after 1 retry.

Behind the scenes

• The flow intentionally leaves Excel open after launch — there is no paired close/save. This is a pure "open" demo template meant to be extended.
• The extension check uses a regex (\.xl\w*$) rather than a file-picker filter, so it matches the full Excel family (.xls, .xlsx, .xlsm, .xlsb) while still rejecting unrelated paths.
• The single-retry pattern (Core.Trigger.Catch + Core.Flow.Label + Core.Flow.GoTo) is reusable boilerplate for any "try once, retry once, then fail" open/launch node.