How to use the Visual Crossing Weather Microsoft Excel Add-in

The Weather Functions Excel Add-in is a fast and easy way to integrate powerful weather data directly into your Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. This free add-in uses the Visual Crossing Weather API and works with the API key from your Visual Crossing account.

Whether you’re tracking weather trends, building business forecasts, or enhancing your data models, the add-in provides a simple and flexible way to retrieve weather conditions, weather forecasts, and historical weather data — all without leaving Excel.

Installing the add-in

The Weather Functions by Visual Crossing add-in is available as a free download on Microsoft AppSource.

To install the add-in directly into Microsoft Excel:

  1. Open Excel and click the ‘Add-ins’ button on the Home ribbon.
  2. Then select ‘More Add-ins’ to open the AppSource browser.
  3. Ensure you’re on the ‘STORE’ tab and search for ‘Weather Functions’.
  4. Find Weather Functions by Visual Crossing and click ‘Add’ to install it.

Once installed, the add-in will be available across all your Excel workbooks.

Supported Microsoft Excel products

The Weather Functions add-in currently supports the following versions of Microsoft Excel:

  • Excel 2019 or later on Mac
  • Excel on the web
  • Excel on Mac (Microsoft 365)
  • Excel on Windows (Microsoft 365)

Using the Weather Functions Add-in

Once installed, you’ll see a new button on the Home ribbon labeled ‘Show Weather Data Options’.

Clicking this button opens the Weather Functions task pane, which guides you through:

  • Creating or signing into your Visual Crossing Weather account
  • Entering and saving your API key (this key will be used for all your weather functions)
  • Setting your default unit group, such as metric or US units (Fahrenheit, inches, etc.)

These settings are stored locally so you only need to enter them once.

Adding Your First Weather Function

To retrieve weather data, you can use the GETWEATHER function in any cell. For example:

=VISUALCROSSING.GETWEATHER("London,UK")
Adding a simple weather function. In Microsoft Excel for the Web, helping documentation is available inline

This function will return a 15-day forecast for London, UK, including various columns such as date, temperature, precipitation, and more. If no date range is included, the data will default to the 15 day forecast.

You can also reference cells to make your formulas more dynamic. For example:

Suppose we are interested in weather for New York City, NY for the first seven days of July. First we enter the location (“New York City,NY”),in cell a1, the starting date in b1 and the ending date in c1. We can then create a function that references these cells.

=VISUALCROSSING.GETWEATHER(A1, B1, C1)

You can enter multiple cities, each with their own date range. To handle multiple cities and date ranges, simply pass ranges instead of single cells:

=VISUALCROSSING.GETWEATHER(A1:A2,B1:B2,C1:C2)

Customizing Columns with elements

By default, the function returns a wide set of columns. You can limit the output to only the data you need using the optional elements parameter.

For example, to get only the location, date, high temperature, and low temperature, use:

=VISUALCROSSING.GETWEATHER(A1:A2,B1:B2,C1:C2,,,"location,datetime,tempmax,tempmin")

This will help reduce visual clutter and focus your worksheet on the specific weather metrics you care about.

Available functions

The add-in supports several custom Excel functions:

VISUALCROSSING.GETWEATHER – Inserts a range of weather data (such as temperature, wind, precipitation, and more) for one or more locations across one or more dates or times.

VISUALCROSSING.GETWEATHERVALUE – Retrieves a single weather value (e.g., high temperature, humidity, etc.) for a specific location and point in time, perfect for use directly within formulas and calculations.

VISUALCROSSING.RETRIEVESTOREDDATASET – Accesses data from your previously stored datasets in the Visual Crossing Weather platform, allowing you to integrate custom or curated weather data into your workbook

Example functions

Make sure your API key is set in the task pane before trying these examples:

Retrieve the weather forecast for New York City,NY
=VISUALCROSSING.GETWEATHER("New York City,NY")
Retrieve the high temperature in London on 6th June 2024
=VISUALCROSSING.GETWEATHERVALUE("London,UK", "2024-06-21", "tempmax")
Retrieve the weather for multiple cities and dates using Excel Ranges
=VISUALCROSSING.GETWEATHER(a2:a4, b2:b4, c2:c4)

Questions or need help?

If you have a question or need help, please post on our actively monitored forum for the fastest replies. You can also contact our Support Team.

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