Automating Excel Reports in Windows with Power Automate AI Builder - window-tip

Hello everyone! Welcome to our blog where we explore how to automate repetitive tasks and save time. In this article, we’ll walk you through using Microsoft Power Automate AI Builder to generate Excel reports on Windows machines. Whether you’re a beginner or have some experience, you’ll find practical tips and step-by-step guidance here.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction to Power Automate AI Builder
2. Configuring Your Environment
3. Designing the Automation Flow
4. Integrating AI Builder for Data Extraction
5. Generating and Formatting Excel Reports
6. Scheduling and Monitoring Automation

Introduction to Power Automate AI Builder

Power Automate AI Builder is a feature within Microsoft Power Automate that allows you to incorporate AI models into your automated workflows without writing any code. You can leverage prebuilt models for tasks such as form processing, object detection, and text recognition. By combining AI Builder with Power Automate, you can extract data from various sources, apply business logic, and output structured results into Excel workbooks automatically. This approach helps reduce manual effort and minimize errors when handling large volumes of data.

In this section, we’ll cover the core capabilities of AI Builder, how it integrates with Power Automate, and the benefits of automating report generation in Excel on Windows environments. You’ll learn why this combination is ideal for organizations looking to scale up processes without relying on IT for custom development.

Configuring Your Environment

Before building your automation flow, ensure you have the necessary prerequisites:

• Windows 10 or later with Microsoft 365 installed
• An active Power Automate license with AI Builder capacity
• A storage account such as OneDrive or SharePoint for Excel files
• Basic familiarity with the Power Automate web portal

First, sign in to the Power Automate portal using your Microsoft account. Next, verify that AI Builder is enabled by navigating to the AI Builder section in the left-hand menu. You may need to purchase or allocate AI Builder credits if it’s not already assigned. Finally, prepare a sample Excel file in your OneDrive or SharePoint library that includes table-formatted data placeholders where you want to inject extracted values.

Designing the Automation Flow

In Power Automate, create a new automated cloud flow triggered on a schedule or by a file update event. Add the following actions in sequence:

1. Trigger: Schedule or When a file is created/modified in folder
2. Get file content: Retrieve the Excel file from OneDrive/SharePoint
3. AI Builder action: Call your chosen AI model (e.g., Form Processing)
4. Parse JSON: Convert AI output into structured data
5. Apply to each: Loop through extracted records
6. Excel Online action: Add a row into the target table
7. Save file: Commit changes back to storage

Use descriptive names for each step to make the flow easy to maintain. You can also insert error handling scopes to capture failures and send notification emails if something goes wrong.

Integrating AI Builder for Data Extraction

AI Builder supports several prebuilt models. For Excel reports, the Form Processing model is ideal for invoices, surveys, or standardized forms. To set it up:

1. Create a new Form Processing model in AI Builder and upload sample documents.
2. Train the model by labeling fields such as “Date,” “Amount,” or “Description.”
3. Publish the model once training accuracy is satisfactory (around 85% or higher).
4. In your flow, select the “Predict” action and choose your Form Processing model.

The model will return a JSON payload with key-value pairs. Use the “Parse JSON” action in Power Automate to transform it into dynamic content that can populate Excel tables.

Generating and Formatting Excel Reports

After extracting data, you can generate reports in a new or existing Excel file. Use the “Add a row into a table” action to insert each record. For further formatting, leverage the “Run script” action with Office Scripts to apply styles, auto-fit columns, or calculate summary metrics.

Example Office Script snippet: function main(workbook: ExcelScript.Workbook) { const sheet = workbook.getWorksheet("Report"); sheet.getRange("A1:C1").getFormat().setBold(true); sheet.getUsedRange().getFormat().autofitColumns(); } This script bolds headers and adjusts column widths automatically.

Scheduling and Monitoring Automation

To ensure reports run without manual intervention, configure the trigger:

• Use a Recurrence trigger to schedule daily, weekly, or monthly runs.
• Optionally combine with the “When a file is modified” trigger for on-demand updates.

For monitoring, enable flow analytics in the Power Automate portal. You can view run history, success/failure counts, and performance metrics. Set up alerting by adding a “Condition” step to check run status and send an email or Teams notification if failures occur.

Conclusion

Thank you for following this guide on automating Excel reports using Power Automate AI Builder. By combining AI extraction with automated flows, you can save hours of manual work and reduce errors. Feel free to customize scripts and triggers to fit your organization’s needs. Happy automating!

Related Links

• Power Automate AI Builder Overview - Microsoft Docs
• Office Scripts for Excel - Microsoft Docs
• Power Automate Home

Tags

Power Automate, AI Builder, Excel Automation, Office Scripts, Workflow Automation, Data Extraction, Microsoft 365, Business Intelligence, Automated Reports, Windows