Launch Excel and Extract Table

The most common way to store structured data into Excel is using tables. Robomotion enables you to retrieve data from whole tables or select specific rows and columns.

What Launch Excel and Extract Table can do

• Download Fixtures subflow then Build Default Path (Core.Programming.Function) sets msg.default_excel_path = $Home$/templates/excel-automation/launch-excel-and-extract-table/fixtures/sample.xlsx and initialises msg.retry_count = 0.
• Core.Dialog.InputBox titled Launch Excel and extract table prompts Select the excel file to extract table from... → msg.selected_file.
• Validate (Core.Programming.Function, outputs: 2) — requires msg.selected_file to match /\.xl\w*$/i; otherwise falls through to Core.Flow.Stop.
• Robomotion.MicrosoftExcel.OpenExcel opens the file with optVisible: true → msg.excel_app_id, then Robomotion.MicrosoftExcel.GetRange with optRange: 'All-Range' and optHeaders: false reads the used range → msg.excel_table, followed by Robomotion.MicrosoftExcel.CloseExcel.
• Stringify Table (Core.Programming.Function) joins each row with \t and rows with \n into msg.excel_text, then Core.Dialog.MessageBox titled Excel table values extracted: shows the result.
• Core.Trigger.Catch around Open Excel — increments msg.retry_count, sleeps 2s, Core.Flow.GoTo back to the Retry Point label; after one retry it stops with failed.

Behind the scenes

• optRange: 'All-Range' asks the Excel node for the entire used range in one call, so there is no need to compute free row/column bounds manually.
• Stringify Table normalises both array-of-arrays and array-of-objects shapes before rendering, so the dialog copes with either header or no-header extractions.
• The single-retry pattern (Core.Trigger.Catch + Core.Flow.Label + Core.Flow.GoTo) handles transient Excel COM startup failures while still bounding the retry cost.
• Close Excel runs before the dialog, so the dialog never blocks the Excel process during display.