Excel Spreadsheet Automation with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for Google Contacts provides formulas that can edit, save, and delete Google Contacts data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search Google Contacts 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 Google Contacts data records you want to retrieve or the modifications to be made, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as GoogleContactsConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Google Contacts data, separated by semicolons.

  You can connect to Google APIs on behalf of individual users or on behalf of a domain. Google uses the OAuth authentication standard. See the "Getting Started" section of the help documentation for a guide.

• 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 Google Contacts data, such as SearchTerms.
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 Friends WHERE SearchTerms = '"&B1&"'",";Provider=GoogleContacts",B2)
3. Change the filter to change the data.