my job involves many repetitive task, how can I automate them

My work involves repetitive task with different documents, I was wondering how I could automate them for performance and productivity.

Basic overview of tasks involved: open file in excel, updated cells, delete rows and column, save as unicode, open the saved unicode file and make sure left column start with the same thing (easily done in notepad ++ as it highlights green), find and replace rows containing only one quotation mark and not "" which can not be done via replace all.

How could i program this, am i able to this from java? any suggestions or solutions?