Excel Spreadsheet Automation with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for ShipStation provides formulas that can query ShipStation data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search ShipStation 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 ShipStation data records you want to retrieve, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as ShipStationConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to ShipStation data, separated by semicolons.

  Use the BASIC Authentication standard to connect.

  1. Login to your ShipStation account
  2. Click on the settings icon in the upper right corner. A column menu will show up on the left
  3. Click Account -> API Settings
  4. On the API Settings page, note the API Key and API Secret.

  Authenticating to ShipStation

  • APIKey: Set this to the API key from the API settings page.
  • APISecret: Set this to the Secret key from the API settings page.
• 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 ShipStation data, such as CustomerId.
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 Tags WHERE CustomerId = '"&B3&"'","APIKey="&B1&";APISecret="&B2&";Provider=ShipStation",B4)
3. Change the filter to change the data.