Release Notes

• Get Excel Sensitivity Label
• Add or Update Excel Sensitivity Label

• Read CSV
• Write CSV
• Append Range Workbook
• Get Table Range Workbook
• Read Cell Formula Workbook
• Read Cell Workbook
• Read Column Workbook
• Read Range Workbook
• Read Row Workbook
• Write Cell Workbook
• Write Range Workbook

• An out-of-memory error occurs while trying to write a data table in Excel using the Write DataTable to Excel activity. The issue happens when attempting to read values with the = or '= prefix characters from Excel documents. As a solution, replace the = or '= prefixes with other characters.

• A COM error occurs when an automation attempts to update a file without a required sensitivity label, as mandated by company policy.

Better handling of large files in Workbook activities

Package now in available activities

• An error occurred when running the Excel Application Scope activity if Microsoft Azure Information Protection (AIP) was installed on the machine and configured to work with Excel.

• Only the first column was available for selection from the CurrentRow menu in child activities of the For Each Excel Row activity when the range to iterate over had multiple columns and the In range property was set to a single starting cell in For Each Excel Row.
• Using the Write Range activity with an XLS file cleared all the cells from the row of the starting cell before writing the data.
• A compilation error occurred when running the Text to Columns activity if the delimiter was set to the backslash character (\) and the source range contained that character.
• When executing activities in a loop such as For Each Excel Sheet or For Each Excel Row, the execution time increased with each iteration.
• Creating or clearing a filter using the Filter Pivot Table activity did not work properly if the pivot table was created with external data sources.
• The Find/Replace Value activity allowed you to select an empty value to replace even though the property does not support blank text. Text - empty value is no longer available as an option in the Plus menu for the Value to find property.

An error occurred when running the Excel Application Scope activity if Microsoft Azure Information Protection (AIP) was installed on the machine.

New Activities

• Lookup - Finds data in a range or sheet using the LOOKUP function.

• The Find First/Last Data Row activity sometimes took longer than expected to process data.
• The modern Read Range activity took longer than expected to process data. To increase performance further, we recommend setting the Read formatting option to RawValue and deselecting the Visible rows only option.
• An error occurred if you used a localized version of Windows and ran a project containing an Insert Column activity in which the data format was set to General.
• The Write DataTable to Excel and Write Range activities didn’t copy the column headers of empty DataTables that contained only headers.
• The Chinese translation for the Plus menu option Ask when run was incorrect.
• An error occurred if the Windows regional format was not set to English (United States) and you ran a project that used a Delete Rows activity with the option All visible rows on a range that included hidden rows.
• The Read Range Workbook activity did not read a cell if its value was a formula that included the HLOOKUP function.
• When you created a new variable or selected an existing variable in the Reference new sheet as field of the Insert Sheet activity from the Designer panel in Studio, the variable was not saved in the properties of the activity.
• An error occurred if you ran a project that contained an Excel Application Scope activity in which the workbook path was set to a CSV file without an extension.

• The Find First/Last Data Row activity did not take into account filters applied to the source range when returning the first row with data. A new option called Visible rows only now enables you to indicate if hidden values from the source range should be ignored.
• A compilation error occurred and publishing failed when you tried to publish Windows - Legacy libraries that contained a Read CSV activity.
• Using the Format Cells activity on a filtered range caused incorrect data to be added to the range.

• Filter Pivot Table - Creates a filter in a pivot table based on the values in a single column and can also be used to clear existing filters.
• Get Cell Color - Retrieves the background color of a cell and saves it as a color variable.
• Invoke VBA - Invokes a macro from an external file containing VBA code and runs it against an Excel file.

• The Read Range activity has been optimized to perform faster when working with formatted Excel files.

• The Workbook activities under System have been renamed in order to be better separated from the Classic and Modern Excel activities:

  • Write Range has been renamed to Write Range Workbook.
  • Write Cell has been renamed to Write Cell Workbook.
  • Read Row has been renamed to Read Row Workbook.
  • Read Range has been renamed to Read Range Workbook.
  • Read Column has been renamed to Read Column Workbook.
  • Read Cell has been renamed to Read Cell Workbook.
  • Read Cell Formula has been renamed to Read Cell Formula Workbook.
  • Get Table Range has been renamed to Get Table Range Workbook.
  • Append Range has been renamed to Append Range Workbook.

• Some Excel versions always open SharePoint documents in read-only mode (e.g. Excel 2019). You can check if a remote document supports editing by opening it manually in Excel on your local machine.

• The Excel Process Scope activity was attempting to kill Excel processes on all users that had Excel processes running instead of just the current user when the Existing process action option was set to Force kill.

• Match Function - Searches for a specified item in a range of cells and returns the relative position of that item in the range.

• The Copy/Paste Range and Append Range activities now catch errors when a copy or paste operation isn’t possible in Excel and display an error message.
• The Use Excel File activity has been updated with a new option in the properties panel, called Keep excel file open. If the excel file is not open at the time the project runs, it keeps the workbook open after the project finished running instead of closing it. This can be used to review the file afterwards.
• The Excel activities and the Append to CSV, Read CSV, and Write CSV activities are now compatible with cross-platform projects.
• You can now specify an entire sheet as the source for the Create Pivot Table activity.
• The Create Pivot Table and Refresh Pivot Table activities have been updated with a new option, Layout, which allows you to change the layout and format of the pivot table. The available options are: compact, tabular, and outline.
• The position of the fields in the Write CSV and Append to CSV activities has been improved.

• Some Excel versions always open SharePoint documents in read-only mode (e.g. Excel 2019). You can check if a remote document supports editing by opening it manually in Excel on your local machine.

• The Delete Rows activity was failing when working with Excel files that have more than a few hundred rows.
• An error was being generated when an Exit Loop activity was added inside a For Each Excel Sheet activity.
• Ranges were not copied correctly in certain cases when using the Copy/Paste Range activity.
• The Copy Sheet activity was not working properly with certain versions of Office 2016.
• shift_jis character encoding is now supported in Windows projects when using the Read CSV activity.
• The Refresh Pivot Table activity was failing when it was used with a pivot table created through Power Query in Excel.

• Starting with Studio v2021.10, a modern design experience is available in the Studio profile. The modern design experience:

  • Makes the modern StudioX activities the default activities in the Studio profile instead of the classic activities.

  • Brings the StudioX design experience to Studio, enabling you to configure child activities of the Use Excel File scope activity directly from the Plus menu of each property without having to manually enter expressions. You can:

    • Browse the contents of the file and select data that matches the type of each property. For example, you can select cells, ranges, tables, sheets, or charts from the workbook. You can also indicate the current row or current sheet in an iteration.
    • Use the Custom Input option to manually specify the input based on table, chart, or sheet names or to enter references to a cell or a range.

    • Switch to Excel to indicate data directly from the file using the Indicate in Excel option. This functionality requires that you install the Excel Add-in.

      The modern design experience is enabled by default. You can select which design experience is used for each project from the Excel activities project settings.

• Excel Process Scope - Opens or reuses Excel processes, loads the Excel project settings and applies them to the associated Excel file. This activity supports working with multiple Excel processes and determines the behavior of the processes in certain situations.
• Single Excel Process Scope - Opens or reuses an Excel process, loads the Excel project settings and applies them to the associated Excel file. This activity supports working with a single Excel process. If you need to work with multiple Excel processes use the Excel Process Scope activity.
• Unprotect Sheet - Enables unprotecting a protected sheet in Excel in order to make changes to it.
• Protect Sheet - Enables protecting a specified sheet in Excel so that no additional changes can be made to it.
• Read Range - Reads the value of an Excel range as a DataTable.
• Remove Duplicates - Deletes duplicate rows in a specified range.

• You can now add UI Automation activities inside a Use Excel File activity to quickly automate the interface of Excel.
• The Delete Rows activity has been updated to not work inside a For Each Excel Row activity when both activities target the same range of rows in order to avoid issues where unintended rows in the iteration would get deleted. A new warning message has been added to the activity for this.

• The Find First/Last Data Row activity has been updated with a new option that lets you select how the last row should be configured:

  • Last populated row – Returns the last populated row.
  • First empty row - Returns the first row that is empty.

• The Write Range activity has received a few updates:

  • The title has been changed to Write DataTable to Excel.
  • The tooltip of the What to write field has been updated to better reflect the intended use of this activity.

• Fixed a reference count issue which caused the ExcelApplicationScope instance cache to fail with a SempahoreFullException error.
• The Excel package now includes the Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel assembly which was not included in previous releases. This was causing a compilation error when you tried to publish a library that contained a variable or argument type which required the assembly.

• You can now enable or disable Excel notifications when working with the StudioX Excel activities through the Show Excel alerts option that is located in the Excel Business project settings, under Excel Visibility.
• The App Integration Excel activities can now be used inside the Use Excel File activity in addition to the Excel Application Scope activity.

• Autofit Range - Changes the displayed column width and/or row height in the specified range to the widest entry in each column and the highest entry in each row.
• Get Excel Chart - Copies an Excel chart to the clipboard for use in other activities or saves it as a picture file.
• Insert Excel Chart - Inserts a chart in a sheet at the specified location.
• Find/Replace Value - Searches in a specified range for certain values. Depending on what operation you choose, it either returns the location of the cell or replaces the value with another given value.
• Refresh Excel Data Connections - Gets the latest data by refreshing all sources in an open Excel workbook.
• Update Excel Chart - Updates the properties of an existing Excel chart.

• SharePoint support has been added to the Use Excel File activity. You can open excel files stored on SharePoint by placing the SharePoint URL in the Excel File field.
• A new property called Read Formatting was added to the Use Excel File activity that lets you choose the formatting that will be applied to values read from Excel.
• A new property called Start in column was added to the Append Range activity.
• A new property called Empty Row Behavior was added to the For Each Excel Row activity that lets you select how the automation behaves if an empty row is encountered.
• A Text files entry was added to the Select File dialog when browsing for Excel files using the Use Excel File activity.
• You can now choose whether Excel windows are visible during the automation and what formatting will be applied to values read from Excel by using the options in the Excel Project settings window.
• New formatting options have been added to the Format Cells activity that enable you to change the alignment, font, and the fill color of a cell.

• The Copy Range activity has received the following updates:

  • The title has been changed to Copy/Paste Range.
  • The Destination field now supports cells. You can provide a single cell and then write the copied data starting from that cell.
  • A new Exclude source headers option has been added. If selected, the first row of the Source range is not copied.
• You can now get the number of rows in an Excel object (ranges, tables, sheets) by using the Row Count property through the Plus menu.
• The Excel Project Settings window has been updated with a new settings category called Excel Preview that determines how Excel files are accessed when using the Plus menu.

• Change Pivot Data Source - Changes the range of the source data for a pivot table.
• Save Excel File As - Saves a workbook added to the project or the Project Notebook as a different file. You can specify the file name and the file format to save as.
• Clear Sheet/Range/Table - Clears the data from a specified sheet, range, or table.
• Read Cell Value - Copies the value from a spreadsheet cell.
• Read Cell Formula - Copies the formula from a spreadsheet cell.
• For Each Excel Sheet - Executes one or more activities for each sheet in an Excel workbook.
• Find First/Last Data Row - Finds the row number for the row where data starts and for the last row containing data in a specified sheet, range, or table.
• Write Range - Writes a data table that was saved for later or values from an Excel table or range into another range.

• An error is no longer thrown when the Write Range activity is used to write in editable cells from protected sheets. The issue occurred in UiPath.Excel.Activities version 2.8.5 and later.
• Fixed an issue that caused the Robot to sometimes get stuck without throwing an error when executing Excel activities, for example when an Excel Application Scope activity was used in a loop, or when multiple Excel Application Scope activities were used consecutively in the same process.
• An error no longer occurs when you try to use the Indicate in Excel option in the StudioX profile with an Excel file from a OneDrive folder. In addition, please note that if a file from a OneDrive folder is open in Excel, the data in it cannot be accessed directly from the Plus menu. To access named cells, named ranges, tables, and sheets from the menu, you must first close the file.
• The correct range is now displayed as the Current Selection in the UiPath tab of the Excel ribbon when you select Indicate in Excel again after having already used this option to select data directly from the file for the same activity field.

• An error no longer occurs when you try to use the Indicate in Excel option in the StudioX profile with an Excel file from a OneDrive folder. In addition, please note that if a file from a OneDrive folder is open in Excel, the data in it cannot be accessed directly from the Plus menu. To be able to select named cells, named ranges, tables, and sheets from the menu, you must first close the file.

• Fixed an issue that caused reading an empty sheet with the Read Range activity to return a data table that contained elements.
• Using the Read Range activity with the AddHeaders check box selected did not properly return values.
• The Execute Macro activity could be used with Excel files that had macro disabled.

• Fixed an issue that caused all languages except English to be incorrectly displayed.

• When trying to edit a read-only Excel file and save changes, the newly generated file was saved at a different location than the original one. The fix saves the new file correctly and also throws an exception notifying the fact that the original file could not be saved.

• Fixed an issue that caused the Excel Read Row activity to retrieve incomplete information from workbooks. As a result, retrieved rows now include the empty cells they contain.
• In certain situations, Excel Workbooks were closed during the execution of an automation project.

• The NPOI and SharpLibZip dependencies have been updated to versions 2.4.1 and 1.0 respectively, thus ensuring we use the latest versions for the Excel activity package.

• Fixed an issue that caused the Robot to sometimes hang or throw a COM exception when executing Excel activities, for example when an Excel Application Scope activity was used in a loop, or when multiple Excel Application Scope activities were used consecutively in the same process.

• Opening password protected files created with Microsoft Excel 2010 threw an error when using the Workbook Activities from the Excel Activities package.
• Fixed an issue that prevented using Excel methods from the Workbook field in Excel Application Scope.

• The Workbook Read Range activity returned incorrect values when reading cells that contained hyperlinks.

• The Excel Copy Sheet activity does not function properly with Office 2010 and 2013 versions.

• Create Table - Creates a table from a specified range.
• Insert/Delete Rows - Adds or removes a specified number of rows at a certain position.
• Insert/Delete Columns - Adds or removes a specified number of columns at a certain position.
• Remove Duplicates Range - Deletes all the rows that are duplicates in a specified range.
• Copy Paste Range - Copies an entire range, including values, formulas, table format, and cell format, and pastes it to a specified sheet.
• LookUp Range - Searches in a specified range for the coordinates of a cell with a certain value and returns them as String variables.
• Get Workbook Sheet - Looks for a sheet based on its index and returns its name as a String variable.
• Get Workbook Sheets - Returns a list of all the sheet names in a workbook as String variables, ordered by their index.
• Auto Fill Range - Takes the formulas defined in the rule range and adapts them to the end range, mimicking the Autofill functionality in Excel.
• Refresh Pivot Table - Refreshes a specified pivot table.
• Create Pivot Table - Creates a pivot table from a specified range.
• Get Selected Range - Returns the selected range as a String variable.
• Copy Sheet - Copies a sheet from a specified workbook and pastes it to a specified workbook. If no other workbook is specified, it is copied to the source file.
• Delete Range - Deletes all the rows in a specified range.

• Fixed an issue that caused the Read Range activity to improperly read worksheets that had the first row empty.

• The Read Range activity did not read the cell specified in the Range property if the Use Filter check box was not selected.

• The Write Range activity corrupted .xls files which were saved in the Excel 97-2003 Workbook format and had the Range property set to start from the B or greater column.
• An exception was thrown if you used the Read Range activity with the Range property set to A1:A1.
• A Read Range activity with the UseFilter property box selected threw an exception at runtime.
• Fixed an issue that caused Read Column to read only the A column in a workbook.

• The AddHeaders property of the Read Range activity is now set to True by default.
• The Get Cell Color activity's Output property category is now spelled correctly, for all you grammar aficionados out there.
• If the WorkbookPath property points to an .xlsm file that doesn't exist, the file is now created without any issues.

• The IsPivot property of the Get Table Range activity does not function properly.
• The Read Column activity fails to properly read columns with empty cells.
• Assigning a variable and then using the Execute Macro activity with the variable as input throws an exception.