Frequently Asked Questions¶

Q: CLI or MCP Server - which should I install?

Both expose the same 326 operations. Use the MCP Server for conversational AI (Claude Desktop, VS Code Chat); use the CLI (excelcli) for coding agents and scripting, where it uses ~64% fewer tokens. You can install both. See Installation.

Q: Does it require Microsoft Excel to be installed?

Yes. Excel MCP Server drives the real Excel application through its COM API, so it's Windows-only and needs Excel 2016 or later installed locally. It is not a file-format parser and does not run on macOS or Linux.

Hitting an actual error rather than a question? See Troubleshooting.

Getting started¶

Do I need to know how Excel automation works to use this?¶

No. You talk to your AI assistant in plain language ("build a PivotTable of sales by product and chart it") and it drives Excel for you. The feature reference is there when you want to see everything that's possible - you don't need to memorize it.

CLI or MCP Server - which should I install?¶

Both expose the same 326 operations. Use the MCP Server for conversational AI (Claude Desktop, VS Code Chat); use the CLI (excelcli) for coding agents and scripting, where it uses ~64% fewer tokens. You can install both. See Installation.

Which AI assistants does it work with?¶

Any client that speaks the Model Context Protocol - GitHub Copilot in VS Code, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, and others. Coding agents that can run shell commands can use the CLI directly instead. See MCP Server installation.

Requirements and platform¶

Does it require Microsoft Excel to be installed?¶

Yes. Excel MCP Server drives the real Excel application through its COM API, so it's Windows-only and needs Excel 2016 or later installed locally. It is not a file-format parser and does not run on macOS or Linux.

Why drive real Excel instead of parsing the file?¶

Because Excel itself is the only thing that fully understands its own file format. Recalculation, Power Query evaluation, the Data Model, PivotTable caches, and chart rendering all live in the application, not in the .xlsx container. See Excel automation vs. file parsers for the full comparison with tools like openpyxl and pandas.

Will it damage my existing workbooks?¶

No. Excel itself opens and saves the file, so formulas, PivotTables, charts, macros, the Data Model, and formatting are all preserved. Other tools that rewrite the .xlsx file directly can silently drop those; here Excel does the work.

Cost, privacy and support¶

Does it cost anything or send my data anywhere?¶

Excel MCP Server is free and open source (MIT). It runs locally against your own Excel. A few opt-in features reach the internet (remote M/DAX formatting, and Python in Excel, which runs in Microsoft's cloud). See Privacy for details.

Where do I report a bug or ask for a feature?¶

On GitHub Issues. If something is failing rather than missing, check Troubleshooting first - most first-time failures are one of a handful of known setup issues.