Input node
Excel Files
Read one sheet, or every sheet, from an Excel workbook.
What it does
Reads Excel workbooks (.xlsx / .xls): the first sheet, one sheet you name, or every sheet stacked into one stream. You can skip title rows above the header, turn the header off entirely, and limit the read to a rectangular block of cells. Several workbooks are read in order and stacked, the same way the CSV reader stacks files.
Inputs and outputs
| Inputs | None. This node starts a pipeline. |
| Outputs | One. |
When to use it
- Load a spreadsheet a colleague sent
- Combine every monthly sheet in one workbook into a single table
- Read a specific block of cells out of a sheet that also holds notes and totals
Examples
First sheet
Sheets: first
The common case, with no sheet name to keep in sync.
One named sheet
Sheets: name → Sheet name: "2026 Q1"
Reads only that tab, whatever position it sits in.
All sheets stacked
Sheets: all · Sheet name column: month
Every tab becomes rows, each tagged with the tab it came from.
Skip a title banner
Skip rows: 3
Ignores three lines above the header, the usual shape of a hand-made report.
A cell block
Cell range: A1:F100
Everything outside the rectangle is ignored, including a totals row underneath.
Tips
- Turn on “Add source file name as column” to tell which workbook each row came from when several are read. Two workbooks can both have a Sheet1, so the sheet name alone cannot.
- The first sheet read, in the first workbook that can be read, sets the columns, and every later sheet or workbook is matched to it BY NAME. A missing column is filled with nulls, an extra one is dropped, and a sheet with no columns in common is skipped. Every difference is named in the run's Messages.
- A workbook that cannot be opened is skipped and named, wherever it sorts, and a workbook whose first sheet is empty is passed over. Under Stop the run, an unreadable workbook stops the run.
- Change that with “If a sheet is different”: Skip reads only sheets matching the first exactly, and Stop the run fails on any difference.
- Skip rows counts the lines ABOVE the header, not data rows. Turn the header off instead if the sheet has no header at all.
- Excel cells carry formatting rather than types, so a column of codes like 00123 is only safe if the sheet stored it as text. Check the result in the Data tab after a Test run.
- Its columns show in the builder without a run.
- Reading every sheet is the fast way to consolidate a workbook someone maintains a tab at a time.
- When the workbook you upload is an archive (.zip or .tar) of several workbooks, turn on 'Run each file separately' to process each one as its own run, named by its path inside the archive (exports.zip!eu/sales.xlsx). Every start does this, a schedule and a flow step included. The runs take turns, one at a time.