Excel Parser

The Excel parser tool reads .xlsx files and converts their contents to Markdown tables. Agents can then analyse, summarise, or extract data from spreadsheets without needing to execute code.

Tool: parse_excel

Parses an Excel file and returns its sheets as Markdown tables.

Arguments

Argument	Type	Description
path	string	Vault path or URL to the .xlsx file
sheet	string	Optional — sheet name to parse (defaults to all sheets)
max_rows	int	Maximum rows per sheet (default: 100)

Output

Returns each sheet as a Markdown table with:

• Sheet name as a heading
• Column headers in the first row
• Up to max_rows data rows

Use cases

Parse the sales data at vault/data/q3-sales.xlsx and identify the top 10 accounts by revenue.

Read the employee list from vault/hr/employees.xlsx and find all employees who joined after January 2024.

Analyse the inventory spreadsheet and flag any items with stock below 10.

Working with large spreadsheets

For spreadsheets with many rows, combine the Excel parser with the sandbox tool:

1. Agent parses the Excel file to understand the structure
2. Agent writes a pandas script to process the full dataset
3. Sandbox executes the script and returns the results

Read vault/data/large-dataset.xlsx (first 5 rows only), then write a Python script to compute the full analysis and run it in the sandbox.

Supported formats

• .xlsx (Excel 2007+) — full support
• .xls (Excel 97-2003) — not supported (convert to .xlsx first)
• .csv — not supported (agents can read CSVs directly via vault or sandbox)