# Spreadsheet-RL: Advancing Large Language Model Agents on Realistic Spreadsheet Tasks via Reinforcement Learning Source: [Spreadsheet-RL: Advancing Large Language Model Agents on Realistic Spreadsheet Tasks via Reinforcement Learning]() Collection index: [llms.txt]() Data updated: 2026-05-25T06:00:00.932Z Authors: Banghao Chi, Yining Xie, Mingyuan Wu, Jingcheng Yang, Jize Jiang, Zhaoheng Li, Shengyi Qian, Minjia Zhang, Klara Nahrstedt, Rui Hou, Xiangjun Fan, Hanchao Yu Published: 2026-05-21T15:47:41.000Z ## Abstract Spreadsheet systems (e.g., Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets) play a central role in modern data-centric workflows. As AI agents grow increasingly capable of automating complex tasks, such as controlling computers and generating presentations, building an AI-driven spreadsheet agent has emerged as a promising research direction. Most existing spreadsheet agents rely on specialized prompting over general-purpose LLMs; while this design has potentials on simple spreadsheet operations, it struggles to manage the complex, multi-step workflows typical of real-world applications. We introduce Spreadsheet-RL, a reinforcement learning (RL) fine-tuning framework designed to train specialized spreadsheet agents within a realistic Microsoft Excel environment. Spreadsheet-RL features an automated pipeline for scalable collection of paired start-goal spreadsheets from online forums, as well as domain-specific evaluation tasks in areas such as finance and supply chain management, which we compile into the new Domain-Spreadsheet benchmark dataset. It also includes a Spreadsheet Gym environment designed for multi-turn RL: Spreadsheet Gym exposes extensive Excel functionality through a Python sandbox, along with a refined harness that incorporates a comprehensive tool set and carefully designed tool-routing rules for spreadsheet tasks. Through comprehensive experiments, we show that Spreadsheet-RL substantially enhances AI agent's performance on both general and domain-specific spreadsheet tasks: it improves Qwen3-4B-Thinking-2507's Pass@1 on SpreadsheetBench from 12.0% to 23.4%, and raises Pass@1 from 8.4% to 17.2% on our curated Domain-Spreadsheet dataset. These results highlight Spreadsheet-RL's strong potential for generalization and real-world adoption in spreadsheet automation, and broadly, its promise for advancing LLM-based interactions with data interfaces in everyday work. ## Recorded benchmark results A research result applies to its stated dataset, split, metric and evaluation configuration. Compare like-for-like settings, preserve the metric's unit and direction, and distinguish paper-reported results from independent reproduction. The best result recorded here is not a claim of exhaustive, current global coverage. - [Spreadsheet Manipulation on SpreadsheetBench](): Spreadsheet Manipulation; SpreadSheetBench; Pass@1: 23.4. ## Original sources and implementation [Original paper]() [PDF]() [Implementation]()