Access Live Airtable Data in Excel (Desktop)

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

Connect Spreadsheets is the easiest way to get all your live data into Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets - no more downloading, wrangling, and uploading files again. Just connect to your data, select the dataset you'd like to see, and import it into your spreadsheet.

Configure Airtable Connectivity for Excel

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

1. Log into Connect Spreadsheets, click Connections and click Add Connection
2. Select "Airtable" from the Add Connection panel
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Airtable.

   APIKey, BaseId and TableNames parameters are required to connect to Airtable. ViewNames is an optional parameter where views of the tables may be specified.

   • APIKey : API Key of your account. To obtain this value, after logging in go to Account. In API section click Generate API key.
   • BaseId : Id of your base. To obtain this value, it is in the same section as the APIKey. Click on Airtable API, or navigate to https://airtable.com/api and select a base. In the introduction section you can find "The ID of this base is appxxN2ftedc0nEG7."
   • TableNames : A comma separated list of table names for the selected base. These are the same names of tables as found in the UI.
   • ViewNames : A comma separated list of views in the format of (table.view) names. These are the same names of the views as found in the UI.
4. Click Create & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Airtable Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

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

Access Live Airtable Data in Excel

The steps below outline connecting to Connect Spreadsheets from Excel to access live Airtable 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 Connect Spreadsheets and install the Add-in.
4. Click Data and open the CData Connect Spreadsheets Add-In.
5. In the Add-In panel, click "Log in" to authenticate with your Connect Spreadsheets account
6. In the Connect Spreadsheets panel in Excel, click Import
7. Choose a Connection (e.g. Airtable1), Table (e.g. SampleTable_1), and Columns to import
8. Optionally add Filters, Sorting, and a Limit
9. Click Execute to import the data and opt to overwrite the existing sheet or create a new one.

Update Airtable Data from Excel

In addition to viewing Airtable data in Excel, Connect Spreadsheets also lets you update and delete Airtable data. Begin by importing data (as described above).

1. Update any cell or cells with changes you want to push to Airtable (your changes will be in red)
2. In the Connect Spreadsheets Add-In panel, select Update
3. Optionally highlight the cell(s) you wish to update and select an update option ("Update All" or "Update Selected")
4. Click Execute to push the updates to Airtable

A notification will appear when the update is complete

Live Access to Airtable Data from Spreadsheet Apps

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

Try Connect Spreadsheets and get real-time data access to 100+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from Microsoft Excel.