Excel Spreadsheet Automation with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for Microsoft Project provides formulas that can edit, save, and delete Microsoft Project data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search Microsoft Project 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 Microsoft Project data records you want to retrieve or the modifications to be made, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as MicrosoftProjectConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Microsoft Project data, separated by semicolons.

  The User and Password properties, under the Authentication section, must be set to valid Microsoft Project user credentials. In addition, you will need to specify a URL to a valid Microsoft Project server organization root or Microsoft Project services file.

• 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 Microsoft Project data, such as ProjectName.
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 Projects WHERE ProjectName = '"&B4&"'","User="&B1&";Password="&B2&";URL="&B3&";Provider=MicrosoftProject",B5)
3. Change the filter to change the data.