Access Live Salesforce 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 Salesforce data directly within Excel, facilitating data analysis, collaboration, calculations, and more. This article shows how to connect to Salesforce in Connect Spreadsheets and access and update live Salesforce 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.

Getting Started

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Configure Salesforce Connectivity for Excel

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

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

   There are several authentication methods available for connecting to Salesforce: Login, OAuth, and SSO. The Login method requires you to have the username, password, and security token of the user.

   If you do not have access to the username and password or do not wish to require them, you can use OAuth authentication.

   SSO (single sign-on) can be used by setting the SSOProperties, SSOLoginUrl, and TokenUrl connection properties, which allow you to authenticate to an identity provider. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the help documentation for more information.

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

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

Access Live Salesforce Data in Excel

The steps below outline connecting to Connect Spreadsheets from Excel to access live Salesforce 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. Salesforce1), Table (e.g. Account), 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 Salesforce Data from Excel

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

1. Update any cell or cells with changes you want to push to Salesforce (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 Salesforce

A notification will appear when the update is complete

Live Access to Salesforce Data from Spreadsheet Apps

New, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live Salesforce 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.