2 Actions to run script in Excel from Power Automate flows

Within Power Automate, it has been possible to run scripts in Excel using the Run Script action. Did you know that there is a Run Scripts from SharePoint library action too?

Run scripts in Excel

Office scripts are similar to Macros. They offer the availability to run some VBA code within your Excel file. The main difference between Office Scripts and Macros is that Office Scripts only support functionality that is available within cloud environments. This means that your Excel file can live within SharePoint and Macros scripts can still run.

Creating an Excel with an Office Script

When you open your Excel file in Excel Online, you will notice the Automate tab. In my Excel file I created a script called colour the current cell yellow.

Excel File with Script
Excel File with Script

When you click on the script the code editor will appear. You could now update the script if needed. However, I’m going to save a copy of the script.

Code Editor for our Script
Code Editor for our Script

I can now select a location where I want my script to appear. Most likely you would want your scripts to sit in a different location, away from your Excel data. In this example I’m going to place it in the same place as it makes screenshots a bit easier.

Save a copy of our script in a location
Save a copy of our script in a location

When we now have a look at the document library, we can find an .xlsx file and a .osts file.

An .osts file has now been created
An .osts file has now been created

We can open the osts file in any editor as shown below.

The code used by our script
The code used by our script

Run script from SharePoint Library in Power Automate

Within Power Automate, we can now create a flow that uses either the Run Script or the Run Script from SharePoint Library action.

Run Script and Run Script from Library
Run Script and Run Script from Library

First I’m going to have a look at Run Script. With the Run Script you can select you site and library before you select the Excel file. Then within that Excel the various scripts can be selected. This is all ok when you have one Excel file with some scripts, but if you have many Excel files with many scripts, then it becomes harder to manage the scripts and Excel files.

The Run Script action
The Run Script action

Run script from SharePoint library

The .osts file that we created earlier we can use using the Run script from SharePoint library action. As shown below you can have the Excel and the script file in the same location, however you could also place your scripts in a different location so that you can secure your scripts in a different way.

Run Script from SharePoint Library action
Run Script from SharePoint Library action

Other Excel actions

If you need some help with other Excel actions, you might also want to check out my post Replace the Excel Online connector with the Microsoft Graph API.


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