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Get the Report →Excel Spreadsheet Automation with the QUERY Formula
Pull data, automate spreadsheets, and more with the QUERY formula.
The CData Excel Add-In for CSV provides formulas that can query CSV data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search CSV 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 CSV data records you want to retrieve, written in standard SQL.
Connection: Either the connection name, such as CSVConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to CSV data, separated by semicolons.
The DataSource property must be set to a valid local folder name.
Also, specify the IncludeFiles property to work with text files having extensions that differ from .csv, .tab, or .txt. Specify multiple file extensions in a comma-separated list. You can also set Extended Properties compatible with the Microsoft Jet OLE DB 4.0 driver. Alternatively, you can provide the format of text files in a Schema.ini file.
Set UseRowNumbers to true if you are deleting or updating in CSV. This will create a new column with the name RowNumber which will be used as key for that table.
- 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.
- 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 CSV data, such as FirstName.
- 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.
- Change the filter to change the data.
=CDATAQUERY("SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE FirstName = '"&B2&"'","DataSource="&B1&";Provider=CSV",B3)