A Power Automate alternative for one job: typing Excel into a web form

Power Automate is the more powerful tool. This page is for the people who only need one thing from it, entering spreadsheet rows into an internal web form, and who are stuck on the licence, the setup or the IT ticket.

What Power Automate does well

Power Automate covers far more than data entry: multi-step flows across applications, scheduled and unattended runs, connectors to Microsoft 365 and business systems, approvals, error handling. If your process needs any of that, it is the right tool and this page will not change your mind.

The desktop part, Power Automate Desktop, is included with Windows 10 and 11 for flows you run yourself. Connectors to systems such as SAP, Salesforce or ServiceNow, and cloud-triggered desktop flows, need a paid premium licence.

Where people get stuck

• The licence. The connector for your system is premium, and the request for a licence is refused or pending.
• The install. The application and its browser extension have to be installed, which on a managed PC usually means a ticket.
• The learning curve. Building a first web flow means learning variables, loops and UI element capture. It is not hard for a developer. For someone in accounting on a Tuesday afternoon, it is a project.
• Changing IDs. Captured UI elements rely on selectors, and internal apps often change their field IDs between releases.

What Rowfill does instead

Rowfill is a Chrome and Edge extension that does one thing: you fill the form once, you paste your rows from Excel, it enters them one by one, visibly, in your own browser session.

• No flow to build: recording is filling the form once, the way you already do.
• No server, no account, no telemetry. Your rows go from your clipboard to the page and nowhere else.
• Fields are found again by their label when their technical IDs change.
• A note for your IT team lists the extension ID to allow and every permission, with its reason.

Side by side

	Power Automate	Rowfill
Scope	General automation	Excel rows into one web form
Setup	Application, browser extension, flow	Browser extension
Multi-page and unattended runs	Yes	No
Where your data goes	Depends on the flow and connectors	Nowhere, it stays in the browser
Price	Desktop included in Windows, premium connectors paid	Free up to 25 rows per run, Pro from 9 EUR a month

The honest recommendation

If you have a licence and a process that spans several systems, stay with Power Automate. If what you need is to stop retyping a spreadsheet into one form, try Rowfill on your real form with 25 real rows. It takes about three minutes to know whether it fits.