Excel Spreadsheet Automation on Instantly Data with the QUERY Formula

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

The CData Excel Add-In for Instantly provides formulas that can query Instantly data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search Instantly 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 Instantly 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 Instantly data, separated by semicolons.

    Using API Key Authentication

    Instantly uses API keys to authenticate requests. You can find or create your API key in the Instantly workspace settings under API & Webhooks.

    After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

    • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
    • APIKey: Set this to your Instantly API key (Bearer token for API v2).

    Example connection string

    Profile=C:\profiles\Instantly.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings="APIKey=your_api_key";
    
  • 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 Instantly data, such as .
  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 AccountCampaignMappings WHERE  = '"&B5&"'","Profile="&B1&";AuthScheme="&B2&";ProfileSettings="&B3&";Provider=API",B6)
  4. Change the filter to change the data.

Ready to get started?

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