Build a real app from your Excel spreadsheet
3 min · 6 steps
Drop an .xlsx, get a Next.js app with CRUD pages, charts, and bidirectional sync. ~90 seconds.
Avery's headline differentiator. Most teams already run their business on a spreadsheet — Avery turns that spreadsheet into a real app you can deploy, share with your team, and extend with auth, notifications, scheduled jobs, etc. The bidirectional sync means edits in either place flow to the other; you don't have to abandon Excel to use the app.
What gets translated: • Sheets → Prisma models + CRUD pages. • Column headers → field names. • Cell types → Prisma types (number → Int/Float, date → DateTime, text → String, dropdown → enum). • Data-validation rules (dropdowns, number ranges, length limits) → Zod validators. • Formulas → TypeScript functions in `lib/xl/<sheet>.ts`. • Charts → DataChart components on each entity's page. • VBA modules → placeholder TS files with line-by-line translation guides. • Existing data rows → seed data the planner uses to pick a sensible archetype.
Steps
- Click 'New app' and pick the Spreadsheet tab.
The wizard has three input modes: free-text description, PRD attachment, spreadsheet attachment. Pick the third.
- Drag in your .xlsx (or click to pick).
Excel .xlsx works best — the generators read sheet names, column types, formulas, charts, validation rules, and VBA all from one file. Google Sheets users: File → Download → Microsoft Excel (.xlsx). Apple Numbers users: Export → Excel. Plain CSV is supported but loses everything except the data table — prefer .xlsx when you have a choice.
- Add a one-line description (optional).
The planner reads your sheet names + sample data to pick an archetype, but a one-liner like "team task tracker" or "sales pipeline CRM" helps when sheet names are ambiguous.
- Pick a theme + database, generate.
Theme defaults match the inferred archetype (slate for system-of-record / dept-ops, nxr otherwise). Database: SQLite for solo / local use, PostgreSQL for anything you'll deploy. Click Generate.
- Watch the build stream.
Six spreadsheet-aware generators auto-inject when a workbook is attached: formula-generator, chart-generator, validation-generator, sync-push-generator, sync-pull-generator, vba-generator. The Console + Activity Stream show every emit. Most workbooks scaffold in 60-120 seconds.
- Open the app, edit, sync.
The app launches with your data already seeded. Click Run dev → the app loads on localhost. Edit a row in the app → Database tab → Sync sub-tab → Push back to the .xlsx. Edit the .xlsx in Excel → Pull from the same Sync sub-tab. The app and the workbook stay in lockstep.
Live recipes need the desktop
This article is a static preview. The in-app Help sidecar inside Avery NXR can fire each step against your live project — install the desktop to use it interactively.