Work in Excel With PlaidXL

~20 minutes · install the add-in, connect, pull data into a sheet

If your day already runs on spreadsheets, you don’t have to leave Excel to work with PlaidCloud. PlaidXL is the PlaidCloud Office Add-in: it lets you pull data from project tables, refresh it on demand, and read PlaidCloud variables directly inside Microsoft Excel. By the end of this tutorial your inputs will come from authoritative project tables instead of a copy-paste that goes stale the moment someone reruns a workflow.

What You’ll Do

1. Install the PlaidXL add-in from the Office add-in store.
2. Sign in and connect Excel to your workspace.
3. Retrieve a project table into a worksheet — headers frozen, filters on, ready to model.

Prerequisites

• A PlaidCloud workspace and an account you can sign in to. If you use single sign-on for PlaidCloud, keep using it here — the login flows through the same identity.
• Microsoft Excel on Windows or Mac.
• A project you can open that has at least one table worth pulling. Any project you already have access to works.

PlaidXL reads your data with your permissions. You sign in as yourself, so PlaidXL shows the projects and tables your account can already see in PlaidCloud — nothing more.

Step 1: Install the Add-in

The add-in comes from Microsoft’s own add-in store, reached from inside Excel. The exact menu differs slightly between Windows and Mac.

On Windows:

1. In Excel, open the Insert > Add-ins menu.
2. Type PlaidCloud into the add-in search box.
3. Select the PlaidCloud Office Add-in and install it.

On Mac:

1. In Excel for Mac, open the Insert > Store menu.
2. Type PlaidCloud into the add-in search box.
3. Select the PlaidCloud Office Add-in and install it.

Once installed, PlaidXL is available in Excel and stays available the next time you open the app — you install it once, not per workbook.

Don’t see PlaidXL after installing? Fully close and reopen Excel, then look on the ribbon (and under Insert → My Add-ins if it’s still hidden). An add-in not showing up until the app restarts is the most common first-run stall for an Office add-in.

Step 2: Connect to Your Workspace

With the add-in open, sign in. How you sign in depends on how you normally reach PlaidCloud.

Your login type	What happens
PlaidCloud login	You’re asked for your email, password, and any multi-factor authentication code you have enabled — the same details you use to sign in to PlaidCloud directly. Fill them in and you’re connected.
Single sign-on	The login is transparent as long as you’re already signed in to your organization. If you aren’t, you’re prompted to sign in through your organization first.

That’s the whole connection. There’s no server address to type and no credential to store in the workbook — the sign-in is the connection.

Step 3: Retrieve a Table Into a Sheet

Now pull real data in.

1. Select your project from the dropdown menu in the PlaidXL panel.
2. Once a project is selected, a list of that project’s tables appears. Click a table to select it.
3. Click Retrieve Table.

The table imports into a new worksheet named after the table. To make it ready to work with immediately, retrieving a table also:

• Freezes the column headers, so they stay visible as you scroll.
• Turns on auto-filters, so you can filter and sort from the header row.
• Creates an offset-based named range covering the data.

The named range mirrors the table name. It’s the table’s name, prefixed with an underscore and with every space replaced by an underscore. A table named “Sample data” becomes the range _Sample_data — handy for formulas that should follow the data as it grows or shrinks on refresh.

You now have live project data in Excel. Build formulas, pivots, and charts against it the way you would any sheet.

Working With Data After the First Pull

A few things are worth knowing once the data is in the sheet.

• Open several tables at once. Retrieve as many tables as you need — each lands in its own worksheet. Bulk buttons let you refresh all active tables to their latest PlaidCloud versions in one click, and pulling all tables also refreshes any pivot tables built on refreshed data.
• Pushing changes back overwrites. If you edit the data in a retrieved sheet and want those edits in PlaidCloud, the Save Table button pushes them up — and there’s a matching bulk push for all active tables.

Saving overwrites the PlaidCloud table with your sheet. The save button is labeled as an overwrite for a reason: it replaces the table’s data in PlaidCloud with what’s in your worksheet. For a day-1 read-only workflow — pulling authoritative data in to model against — you can leave saving alone entirely.

Where to Go Next

• PlaidXL reference — install, connect, and retrieve details, plus the save and bulk operations in full.
• From CSV to Answer — get data into PlaidCloud in the first place, so there’s an authoritative table for PlaidXL to pull.
• CLI Tools — the other on-machine tools, including PlaidLink for reaching data behind your firewall.