Spreadsheet Builder

mcp-spreadsheet

Featured on [Awesome MCP Servers](https://mcpservers.org) - directory listing | live hosted endpoint, free tier, no signup.

Hand your AI assistant a spreadsheet and talk to it. Point it at any .xlsx, .xlsm, .xlsb, .xls, .ods, .csv or .tsv file on your machine and ask what is in it, filter it, compute a new column, or save it in another format. It handles the messy parts of real files for you: it guesses which row holds the headers, sniffs whether a CSV is separated by commas, semicolons or tabs, keeps quoted commas and newlines intact, reads numbers out of $1,250.00 style text, and reports per-column types and empty counts. It never edits your original file: every write goes to a new path unless you explicitly choose overwrite. Nothing leaves the machine, and there is no API key to get.

In the [official MCP Registry](https://registry.modelcontextprotocol.io/v0.1/servers/io.github.theluckystrike%2Fexcel-spreadsheet-xlsx-csv/versions/latest) (io.github.theluckystrike/excel-spreadsheet-xlsx-csv).

Listed on the [AI Product Index](https://index.percall.dev/l/zovo-spreadsheet.html) - live remote endpoint at mcp.zovo.one/s/spreadsheet, free tier, no signup.

Read, query and extend real spreadsheets from chat without ever touching the original file.

60-second install

Use spreadsheet.mcpb v0.22.9 in Claude Desktop. Published checksums and the versioned download catalog identify the exact release. The npm package is not published.

For a source installation, use Node.js 22 or newer and build the shared dependency first:

git clone https://github.com/theluckystrike/mcp-servers.git

cd mcp-servers npm ci node scripts/bootstrap-timezone.mjs npm run build -w packages/mcp-license -w servers/spreadsheet

Merge this entry into Claude Desktop's mcpServers, or into .cursor/mcp.json for Cursor. Replace the absolute path with your checkout:

{

"mcpServers": { "spreadsheet": { "command": "node", "args": ["/absolute/path/mcp-servers/servers/spreadsheet/dist/index.js"] } } }

For Claude Code:

claude mcp add spreadsheet -- node /absolute/path/mcp-servers/servers/spreadsheet/dist/index.js

To run in Pro mode set MCP_LICENSE_KEY in the same config block, or call license_activate once with your key.

Spreadsheet update

Version 0.22.9 uses the vendor's patched SheetJS 0.20.3. Numeric date cells now follow the time actually stored in the workbook. Some numeric-date files produced by older versions can display 30 seconds differently in historical-offset timezones such as Ho Chi Minh. No guessed offset is added to your data. Reading does not rewrite the source file.

Tools

Resource template: sheet:// returns the sheet_info summary for that file. Resource: sheet://recent lists the files this server has opened since it started, most recent first (in memory only, nothing is written to disk, so the list is empty again after a restart).

Prompt: explore_sheet walks an unfamiliar file, sheet_info first, then concrete sheet_query calls built from the columns it actually found.

What you can say

Worked example

From docs/USER_VALUE_R2.md, a 400-row fixture with a title row and a blank row above the real header (row 3), sheets Sales / Reps / Notes, prices stored as strings like "1,516.16". One call, ground truth confirmed against the generator: Turing 650, Hopper 567, Linus T 551, Lovelace 486, Liskov 290.

You: Which rep sold the most units in the North region? Top 5 with totals.

sheet_query { path: "/Users/you/sales.xlsx", sheet: "Sales", where: "[Region] = \"North\"", group_by: ["Rep"], aggregate: [{ col: "Units", fn: "sum", as: "total_units" }], sort: { col: "total_units", dir: "desc" }, limit: 5 }

Assistant: Query: where [Region] = "North"; group by Rep; sum Units as total_units; sort total_units desc; limit 5 5 groups from 102 of 400 rows, showing 5

Alan Turing 650 Grace Hopper 567 Linus T 551 Ada Lovelace 486 Barbara Liskov 290

The response now echoes the exact query it ran (the Query: line) before the numbers, so a filter you did not ask for, an accidental AND [Status] = "Closed", say, is visible instead of silently narrowing the answer.

A second example, adding a column and saving without touching the source:

You: Add a Revenue column and save it as a CSV next to the original.

sheet_add_column { path: "/Users/you/sales.xlsx", sheet: "Sales", name: "Revenue", formula: "[Units] * [Unit Price]", out_path: "/Users/you/sales.csv" }

Assistant: Wrote 400 rows (401 lines with header) to sales.csv. Revenue = Units * Unit Price on every row, total 10,142,542.04. Source file untouched.

The where and formula language

A small expression language, parsed and evaluated directly. There is no eval and no code execution: a bare word is always a column name, never a JavaScript value.

• Columns: [Unit Price] for names with spaces, Qty otherwise. Lookup is case insensitive.
• Comparisons: = != > >= < <= contains startswith endswith
• Logic: AND OR NOT and parentheses. AND binds tighter than OR.
• Arithmetic in formulas: + - * % / with the usual precedence.
• Strings: 'single' or "double" quotes; double a quote to escape it.

[Qty] >= 5 AND ([Status] = "open" OR [Region] contains "north")

[Amount] > 1000 AND NOT [Customer] startswith 'Test'

Formula example for sheet_add_column: [Qty] * [Unit Price]. When every column the formula reads holds at most 2 decimals, the result is rounded to 2 decimals, so [Amount] * 1.23 on money gives 40.79 rather than 40.7868. Pass decimals (0-10) to choose the precision yourself.

Numbers written as text in a CSV are converted by pattern, not by length: 1250.00, 12.00 and 1,250.00 all become numbers in the xlsx output, so Excel's own SUM counts them. Identifier-shaped and ambiguous values stay text: 007 keeps its leading zeros and 1.250,00 is left alone rather than guessed at.

Text comparisons ignore case and surrounding whitespace. Values like $1,250.00, 1 250, and 12% compare as numbers, so [Amount] > 1000 works on a column your spreadsheet stored as text.

Free vs Pro

Over a free read limit the tool still does the work and returns the part it is allowed to return (the first 5,000 rows), with a note saying what was left out. Over the free write limit nothing at all is written: a partial file that looks complete is worse than no file, so the tool refuses, tells you the row count and the cap, and suggests a free workaround (filter the rows down first, or write in 500-row batches). Nothing fails silently.

Get Pro

$19 one-time for this server, $39 for every server, lifetime: https://mcp.zovo.one/buy/spreadsheet

How it stores data

This server keeps no database of its own, it reads and writes the spreadsheet files you point it at, directly on your disk, and nothing else. Every write (sheet_write, sheet_add_column, sheet_convert in overwrite mode) goes to a temporary file in the same directory first, then is renamed into place, so an interrupted write leaves either the untouched original or the complete new file, never a truncated one. Because there is no shared state file, there is no advisory lock to take: two calls writing to two different output paths cannot collide, and a call to overwrite the same file twice in a row is simply two writes in sequence. To back up your data, back up the spreadsheet files themselves, there is nothing else to copy.

Limits and honest caveats

• Free reads cap at 5,000 rows and 5 MB; free writes cap at 500 rows per file and refuse rather than truncate, you get an error naming the row count and the cap, never a shorter file that looks complete.
• The hard ceiling is 50 MB regardless of tier; a file over that is refused outright with a clear message rather than risking memory exhaustion.
• The where/formula language is intentionally small: no regular expressions, no custom functions, no cross-sheet references in a single formula. It covers comparisons, boolean logic and arithmetic, nothing more.
• Writing an xlsx replaces one sheet, not the workbook. sheet_write with append or overwrite reads the whole workbook, swaps the sheet you named and writes every other sheet back, so Sheet2 and its data survive an append to Sheet1. What is *not* preserved is the sheet being written: it is rebuilt from values, so formulas, cell formatting, conditional formatting, charts, data validation and merged cells on that one sheet become plain values. Other sheets keep their cells as read. Take a copy first if the target sheet carries formatting you cannot recreate.
• Numbers written as text are read with locale-aware rules. 1,250.00, 1 250.00, $1,250.00, 12,99, 1.234,56 and EUR 1 250,00 all read as numbers; a decimal comma is only accepted in the unambiguous shape (a comma with exactly two digits at the end, dots or spaces grouping). Anything that mixes separators another way (1,2500.00) stays tex