Access Live Printful Data in Excel (Desktop) via Connect AI

Microsoft Excel is a widely used spreadsheet software application, primarily used for tasks related to data management, analysis, and visualization. When combined with CData Connect AI, you gain immediate access to Printful data directly within Excel, facilitating data analysis, collaboration, calculations, and more.This article shows how to connect to Printful in your Connect AI instance and access live Printful data in Excel spreadsheets.

CData Connect AI provides a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for Printful, allowing you to easily access live Printful data in Excel for the web. Simply use the Connect AI Add-In to query live data (or write your own). Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes all supported query operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Printful, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Printful data.

Configure Printful Connectivity for Excel

Connectivity to Printful from Excel is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Printful data from Excel, we start by creating and configuring a Printful connection.

1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection

2. Select "Printful" from the Add Connection panel

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Printful.

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

   Printful API Profile Settings

   In order to authenticate to Printful, you'll need to provide your API Key. To get your API Key, first go to 'Settings' then 'Stores'. Select the Store you would like to connect to, then click the 'Add API Access' button to generate an API Key. Set the API Key in the ProfileSettings property to connect.

   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Printful Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to Printful data from Excel.

Access Live Printful Data in Excel

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Excel to access live Printful data.

1. Open Excel, create a new sheet (or open an existing one).
2. Click Insert and click Get Add-ins. (if you have already installed the Add-In, jump to step 4).
3. Search for CData Connect AI Add-In and install the Add-in.
4. Click Data and open the CData Connect AI Add-In.
5. In the Add-In panel, click Authorize to authenticate with your CData Connect AI instance
6. In the CData Connect AI panel in Excel, click Import
7. Choose a Connection (e.g. API1), Table (e.g. Orders), and Columns to import
8. Optionally add Filters, Sorting, and a Limit
9. Click Execute to import the data

Live Access to Printful Data from Cloud Applications

Now, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live Printful data from your Excel workbook. You can add more data to your workbook for calculations, aggregations, collaboration, and more.

Try CData Connect AI and get real-time data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications.