Excel Spreadsheet Automation with the QUERY Formula

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

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

  Invoiced API Profile Settings

  In order to authenticate to Invoiced, you'll need to provide your API Key. An API key can be obtained by signing in to your account, and then going to Settings > Developers > API Keys. Set the API Key in the ProfileSettings property to connect.

• 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 Invoiced data, such as Paid.
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 Invoices WHERE Paid = '"&B4&"'","Profile="&B1&";ProfileSettings="&B2&";Provider=API",B5)
3. Change the filter to change the data.