For basic automation I would encourage you to continue with excel and learn to use macros and vba to achieve what you want. There are a few benefits to sticking within the excel ecosystem;
- Your existing excel data is more easily accessible
- It seems like you already have baseline excel expertise which you can build upon
- There is a wide variety of support resources tackling the same issues you face, such as /r/excel
There are obviously downsides to using excel which you have to weigh up.
To get a taste of what you can do, here is a quick intro that add's a button to a spreadsheet to automate a fairly mundane printing task and guides you through the excel developer tools needed to achieve what you want see:
https://medium.com/lets-excel/microsoft-excel-the-one-automation-macro-you-need-to-use-6ec44a0e4b1a
A more thorough course can be found here - I haven't taken this course - but did review it for it's content and suitability for someone at your level:
https://www.coursera.org/learn/excel-vba-for-creative-problem-solving-part-1