Excel MCP Server

Excel MCP Server

An open-source Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that lets Claude, Cursor, VS Code Copilot, Codex and other AI clients create, read and edit Excel files: charts, PivotTables, formulas, tables and more. It is built on openpyxl, needs no Microsoft Excel, and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.

Install and try it at [excelmcpserver.com](https://excelmcpserver.com), or see Quick start below.

Features

Charts and PivotTables

• Create Excel charts with AI: column, bar, line, area, pie, doughnut, radar, scatter and bubble, with combos, secondary axes, trendlines and error bars
• The Excel 2016 chart types: waterfall, histogram, Pareto, box and whisker, treemap, sunburst and funnel
• Real PivotTables that Excel refreshes (grouping, calculated fields, "show values as", layouts, filters), plus slicers and timelines for PivotTables and tables
• Sparklines (line, column, win/loss)

Formulas and dynamic arrays

• Formulas are calculated without Excel by a built-in engine (about 260 functions, checked against more than 2,500 formulas recorded from real Excel), so read_range returns values for files that were never opened in Excel
• Dynamic arrays (FILTER, SORT, UNIQUE, SEQUENCE, LET) are stored as Excel stores them and spill into the cells next to them
• Find out why a number is wrong: trace precedents and dependents across sheets, names and tables, and evaluate a formula step by step as Excel's Evaluate Formula does
• Goal Seek: change an input until a formula reaches the value you want

Data, tables and rules

• Read and write cells, dates and hyperlinks; tables with totals rows and calculated columns
• Conditional formatting (scales, data bars, icon sets, top/bottom, duplicates, text, dates), data validation (dropdowns, limits, input messages)
• Sort, filter (with criteria), find and replace, remove duplicates, text to columns, fill series, paste special
• Fonts, fills, borders, number formats, merged cells, frozen panes, grouping, print setup, sheet protection, images, notes and defined names. Inserting or deleting rows and columns updates every reference, as in Excel

Large files

• Reads stream the workbook and return pages, so memory stays flat on sheets with hundreds of thousands of rows; every call is bounded by size and cell limits
• Edits of a sheet of 1 MB of XML or more parse only the rows they touch, so inserting or deleting rows and columns, sorting, replacing, copying a sheet and creating a PivotTable take seconds on a 200,000-row sheet instead of minutes

Macros (opt-in)

• Read the VBA code in .xlsm files. Writing VBA is off unless you start the server with --allow-vba-write, which also decides whether create_workbook and import_workbook may make .xlsm/.xltm files; the server never runs macros

Safe by design

• Optional folder confinement, a formula safety check, read-only mode, localhost-only HTTP by default, and atomic saves that never leave a half-written file

Works with .xlsx, .xlsm (macros are preserved), .xltx and .xltm files. Existing threaded comments, shapes, form controls and other content the tools cannot edit are kept as they are.

Quick start

You need uv. Every client runs the server with uvx excel-mcp-server stdio; replace /path/to/workbooks with the folder the server may use. excelmcpserver.com has the same steps with copy buttons and one-click install links for Cursor and VS Code.

Claude Desktop (Chat): download excel-mcp-server.mcpb from the latest release and open it. Claude asks which folder the server may use.

Claude Code (the CLI, and the Code tab in Claude Desktop):

claude mcp add excel --scope user -- uvx excel-mcp-server stdio --allow-dir /path/to/workbooks

Cursor (~/.cursor/mcp.json), and most clients that use an mcpServers config:

{

"mcpServers": { "excel": { "command": "uvx", "args": ["excel-mcp-server", "stdio", "--allow-dir", "/path/to/workbooks"] } } }

VS Code with GitHub Copilot (.vscode/mcp.json, note the servers key):

{

"servers": { "excel": { "type": "stdio", "command": "uvx", "args": ["excel-mcp-server", "stdio", "--allow-dir", "${workspaceFolder}"] } } }

OpenAI Codex, Gemini CLI, Devin Desktop, and Claude Desktop without the bundle

OpenAI Codex (CLI, IDE extension and app):

codex mcp add excel -- uvx excel-mcp-server stdio --allow-dir /path/to/workbooks

Gemini CLI:

gemini mcp add -s user excel uvx excel-mcp-server stdio --allow-dir /path/to/workbooks

Devin Desktop:

devin mcp add -s user excel -- uvx excel-mcp-server stdio --allow-dir /path/to/workbooks

Claude Desktop, manual setup: open Settings, Developer, Edit Config, add the mcpServers JSON above to claude_desktop_config.json, and restart Claude.

Desktop apps often cannot find uvx, because they do not see your shell's PATH (common on macOS). Use its full path instead, which which uvx prints.

Choosing which files it can use

With --allow-dir DIR, the server only opens workbooks inside DIR (subfolders included) and relative paths such as reports/q1.xlsx start there. Repeat the flag to allow several folders, or set EXCEL_FILES_PATH (separate folders with : on macOS/Linux and ; on Windows).

Without --allow-dir, any absolute path to an Excel file works. In every mode the server only touches Excel files and never silently overwrites an existing workbook.

Remote use (Streamable HTTP)

uvx excel-mcp-server streamable-http --allow-dir /srv/workbooks

Clients connect to http://127.0.0.1:8017/mcp. Workbooks live in the --allow-dir folder (default ./excel_files), and export_workbook / import_workbook move files between the server and the client.

The server listens on localhost only. To accept other machines, set a token and a host:

EXCEL_MCP_AUTH_TOKEN=change-me uvx excel-mcp-server streamable-http --host 0.0.0.0

Clients then send Authorization: Bearer change-me. Put a TLS-terminating reverse proxy in front of it for use across networks.

Docker

docker build -t excel-mcp-server .

docker run -p 8017:8017 -v "$PWD/workbooks:/data" -e EXCEL_MCP_AUTH_TOKEN=change-me excel-mcp-server

Configuration

Tools

Choosing tools

Every tool costs context in every request. --tools offers only the core tools (describe_workbook, describe_sheet, read_range) and the areas you list, for example uvx excel-mcp-server stdio --tools data,charts. It combines with --read-only (read-only tools of the areas) and --allow-vba-write (which also needs the vba area). An unknown area stops the server at startup and lists the valid ones. The sizes are characters of tool descriptions and schemas, at about 3.5 characters per token:

| sheets | create_sheet, rename_sheet, copy_sheet, delete_sheet, insert_rows_or_columns, `delete_ro