Solved : How to read/write Excel file using Open Office

On my machine I do not have MS office installed but I have Open Office. So how I could read/write excel file using UIPath. Please help me if you have any idea or you have do it before.

Thanks
Sat Kumar

Use read range activity and Write Range (Under system > File > Workbook) to read the entire excel without MS office. @satkumar

@HareeshMR I have try it and now error is gone thanks for it. But still data is not reading. Means data not show in grid after read.

Getting below error I am just beginner in to RPA so do not have much knowledge into developing Robot.
Please check the UiPath extension. ----> System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException: Cannot communicate with the browser, please check the UiPath extension.

Hi buddy @satkumar

Welcome to UiPath community
Fine
I would like to suggest you one thing on when to use excel based read range Activity and workbook based read range Activity
–Excel read and write range Activity
Well if your system is installed with Excel, kindly use excel related activities to read and write data in excel with read range Activity and write range activity…the reason is they were madr exclusively for writing and reading from excel…and are much faster and reliable
–Workbook read and write range activity
This must be used only when we dont have excel installed in the system or we want to write our table data in to workbook application other than excel like open office or any other…only when we dont have excel…
Or sometimes we can use this in our workflow with data to be passed to a excel file…but its not that fast and reliable especially when we are trying to execute any macros or vba scripts…

So in your case i would suggest to go for excel related activities and for that install that package
Go to design tab ->manage packages → in official tab type as Uipath.Excel.Activities
Install it and use buddy

Hope this would help you
Cheers @satkumar

Fine if we are using the workbook related activities atlast, kindly check whether the output datatable has any data by using these activities
–after workbook Activity use a a Activity called output datatable Activity and pass the variable obtained from workbook Activity as input
–get the output from output datatable Activity with a variable of type string
–mention this string variable in writeline Activity as INPUT and check with the output panel whether it shows any value or not
Kindly share that screenshot buddy
Cheers @satkumar

Hi @Palaniyappan thanks for interest to help me. I am getting below error which is in attachment.

1 Like

No worries
The error is due to the extension missing
We need to install chrome extension

Or
Better try with IE which is the default browser for UiPath
That would work for sure
Cheers @satkumar

@Palaniyappan Ok thanks, but how I need to set default IE browser.

@satkumar In open browser activity properties there is option to choose browser there choose IE

@indra Thank you very much you save my couple of hours. It’s working fine now.

@Palaniyappan Thank you very much you save my couple of hours. It’s working fine now.

1 Like

Fantastic buddy
Cheers @satkumar
Keep going

Hi @Palaniyappan

Good Day!

Above all steps are done but I am still facing issue because I am into VM environment and getting below error and it is necessary for us to upload excel data to website using UI Path Studio X, could you please help on that?

Thank You!

Best Regards,
Pooja Prasad

Hi @Palaniyappan ,

Also we cannot install Microsoft Office on VM machine as I am using for office purpose on their asset but Open office is installed on VM which could upload the file on studio but when I want to open the file and indicate robot the headers and value to copy paste from excel to browser it is not allowing me with above error.

Could you please help on how I can read write my excel file in .xls format on VM machine to upload on website using UI Path StudioX?