Excel Spreadsheet Automation on Float Data with the QUERY Formula

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Pull data from Float, automate spreadsheets, and more with the QUERY formula.

The CData Excel Add-In for Float provides formulas that can query Float data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search Float 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 Float data records you want to retrieve, written in standard SQL.
  • Connection: Either the connection name, such as APIConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Float data, separated by semicolons.

    Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the Float Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\Float.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for Float (see below).

    Float API Profile Settings

    Obtain your API key from your Float Account Settings page under the API Access Token section.

  • 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 Float data, such as Active.
  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.
  3. =CDATAQUERY("SELECT * FROM Accounts WHERE Active = '"&B4&"'","Profile="&B1&";ProfileSettings="&B2&";Provider=API",B5)
  4. Change the filter to change the data.

Ready to get started?

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