How to Connect Dub to Excel (4 Methods Compared)

The Problem With Getting Workbook Data In and Out of Dub

You have an Excel workbook full of data — destination URLs for blog posts, campaign landing pages, product pages, partner referral links. You need short, branded Dub links created for each one, or you need click counts and targeting settings pulled back out so you can report on them. Either direction requires more steps than it should.

Dub is good at managing short links at scale: branded domains, tag hierarchies, geo-targeting, click analytics. But the bridge between your workbook and Dub is a gap you have to close yourself. The default flow is exporting a CSV from Dub or manually pasting URLs one at a time into the Dub dashboard — and then doing the return trip by hand when you need analytics back.

Below are the four common ways teams handle this. Only the last one scales.

Method 1: Manual Copy-Paste

The default. You open your workbook, copy a destination URL from a cell, tab over to Dub, create a new link, paste the URL, configure the domain and key, copy the resulting short link, switch back to Excel, paste it into the adjacent cell, and move to the next row.

That's seven steps per link. For most Excel users, the more common variation is exporting the URL column as a CSV, running a batch operation in another tool, and re-importing — which adds its own set of steps and a real chance of misaligned rows on the way back.

Fine for one campaign. A recurring process that happens monthly turns this into a grind that nobody owns and everyone avoids.

Method 2: Power Automate

Power Automate has a Dub connector pathway via its HTTP actions. You can build a flow that reads rows from your Excel table, calls the Dub API for each one, and writes the result back.

Quick check before you go further: are you comfortable with HTTP requests, JSON response parsing, and Excel table connectors in Power Automate? If those feel unfamiliar, skip to Method 3 or 4 — you'll get to the same outcome faster.

If you're still here: you authenticate against the Dub API, configure an Apply to each loop over your table rows, send the create-link HTTP POST, parse the response body to extract the short URL, and write it back into your table.

The mechanics work. The ceiling is that Apply to each fires one iteration per row — 300 URLs means 300 API calls, each logged as a separate run. When one fails because of a malformed URL or an API rate limit hit, the error sits in the run history and the remaining rows may or may not proceed cleanly.

You probably just need the short links. You probably have no idea how to configure error handling in a Power Automate loop — most people who aren't in IT or operations don't. So this ends up on someone else's plate, and you wait.

And the moment your table adds a new column or changes structure, the flow needs to be updated before it runs correctly again.

Method 3: The Previous Generation — Connector Add-Ons

Until recently, the best option for repeatable workbook ↔ Dub workflows was a category of scripts and add-ins that let you configure API credentials, map columns to Dub fields, and run batches manually. You set up the template once, saved it, and hit run.

That was a real improvement over copy-pasting one row at a time. The config was reusable, the output format was consistent, and the team didn't have to remember every naming convention for domains and tags.

But every mapping decision was still yours: which column, which domain, which tag logic, which rows to include. The tool got the data through, but the thinking was still on you. And when the workbook structure changed — a column renamed, a new campaign field added — the config broke until someone fixed it.

This is the previous generation. It worked, but it asked a lot of the operator.

The Easy Way: Using SheetXAI in Excel

There is a different way entirely. SheetXAI is an AI agent that lives inside your Excel workbook. It reads the workbook, understands what you're looking at, and through its built-in Dub integration it can create links, update tags, pull analytics, and write everything back to the correct columns — for you. No template configuration, no automation glue. You just describe what you need.

Example 1: Bulk-create short links for a URL list

For each row in my Excel table with a destination URL in column A and a custom key in column B, upsert a Dub short link using that key and paste the final short URL into column C.

Every row gets its own Dub short link, and the resulting short URL lands in column C next to its source URL and key.

Example 2: Pull click analytics back into the workbook

Look up every short link key in my Excel table's column A using Dub's link info and write the destination URL, tag list, and total clicks back into columns B, C, and D.

The pattern: instead of exporting from Dub and reformatting for your workbook, you ask for the pull and the write-back in one instruction. SheetXAI handles the field mapping inline.

Try It

Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open any Excel workbook with a list of destination URLs or Dub link IDs, then ask it to create links or pull analytics. The Dub integration is included in every SheetXAI plan.