Microsoft Excel 365 and Postgres integration

Description This workflow is a practical, “dirty” solution for real-world scenarios where frontline workers keep using Excel in their daily processes. Instead of forcing change, we take their spreadsheets as-is, clean and normalize the data, generate embeddings, and store everything in Supabase. The benefit: frontline staff continue with their familiar tools, while data analysts gain clean, structured, and vectorized data ready for analysis or RAG-style AI applications. How it works Frontline workers continue with Excel** – no disruption to their daily routines. Upload & trigger** – The workflow runs when a new Excel sheet is ready. Read Excel rows** – Data is pulled from the specified workbook and worksheet. Clean & normalize** – HTML is stripped, Excel dates are fixed, and text fields are standardized. Batch & switch** – Rows are split and routed into Question/Answer processing paths. Generate embeddings** – Cleaned Questions and Answers are converted into vectors via OpenAI. Merge enriched records** – Original business data is combined with embeddings. Write into Supabase** – Data lands in a structured table (excel_records) with vector and FTS indexes. Why it’s “dirty but useful” No disruption** – frontline workers don’t need to change how they work. Analyst-ready data** – Supabase holds clean, queryable data for dashboards, reporting, or AI pipelines. Bridge between old and new** – Excel remains the input, but the backend becomes modern and scalable. Incremental modernization** – paves the way for future workflow upgrades without blocking current work. Outcome Frontline workers keep their Excel-based workflows, while data can immediately be structured, searchable, and vectorized in Supabase — enabling AI-powered search, reporting, and retrieval-augmented generation. Required setup Supabase account Create a project and enable the pgvector extension. OpenAI API Key Required for generating embeddings (text-embedding-3-small). Microsoft Excel credentials Needed to connect to your workbook and worksheet. Need Help 🔗 LinkedIn – Wessel Bulte

Synchronize Excel or Google Sheets with Postgres (bi-directional) Who’s it for This workflow is perfect for companies that have always managed their operations in Excel or Google Sheets and want to gradually transition to using a database or custom software. It ensures business continuity while modernizing data management. How it works / What it does Trigger options → Run the sync manually, on schedule, or as part of another workflow. Get data from Excel → Reads rows from an Excel or Google Sheet table. Sanitize data → Cleans up formats (e.g., converting Excel serial dates into proper date strings). Upsert into Postgres → Inserts or updates rows in the database, ensuring no duplicates. For auto-mapping to work, the column names in Excel/Sheets and the DB must match exactly. If you want different names, you can manually map columns in the Postgres node. (Optional) → Can be extended to push DB updates back to Excel, creating a true two-way sync. This way, your team can continue working in Excel/Sheets while data is safely persisted in a database—ideal for scaling into dashboards, SaaS, or ERP systems later. How to set up Import the workflow JSON into your n8n instance. Connect your credentials: Microsoft Excel / Google Sheets OAuth2 Postgres database Point the Excel node to the right workbook, worksheet, and table. Make sure column names match between the Excel sheet and DB table (or map manually if they differ). Run manually or configure the schedule trigger for automated syncs. Requirements n8n self-hosted or cloud account. Either Microsoft Excel Online or Google Sheets access. Postgres database (or replace with MySQL, MariaDB, or any supported DB). How to customize the workflow Replace Excel with Google Sheets by swapping the node. Replace Postgres with any preferred database node. Add validation steps (e.g., check for missing emails, duplicate IDs). Extend with reporting workflows (e.g., sync DB data to BI dashboards). Use this as a stepping stone to migrate from spreadsheets into software-driven processes.