Excel Spreadsheet Automation with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for Exact Online provides formulas that can edit, save, and delete Exact Online data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search Exact Online data for a user-specified value and then organize the results into an Excel spreadsheet.

The syntax of the CDATAQUERY formula is the following: =CDATAQUERY(Query, [Connection], [Parameters], [ResultLocation]);

This formula requires three inputs:

• Query: The declaration of the Exact Online data records you want to retrieve or the modifications to be made, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as ExactOnlineConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Exact Online data, separated by semicolons.

  Exact Online uses the OAuth authentication standard. You can use the embedded OAuth credentials or you can register an OAuth app with Exact to obtain your own. In addition to the OAuth values, provide the Region. If Division is not set, the default Division is determined.

  See the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation for more information.

• ResultLocation: The cell that the output of results should start from.

Pass Spreadsheet Cells as Inputs to the Query

The procedure below results in a spreadsheet that organizes all the formula inputs in the first column.

1. Define cells for the formula inputs. In addition to the connection inputs, add another input to define a criterion for a filter to be used to search Exact Online data, such as IsCompetitor.
2. In another cell, write the formula, referencing the cell values from the user input cells defined above. Single quotes are used to enclose values such as addresses that may contain spaces.
=CDATAQUERY("SELECT * FROM Accounts WHERE IsCompetitor = '"&B3&"'","Region="&B1&";Division="&B2&";Provider=ExactOnline",B4)
3. Change the filter to change the data.