Comments on: Microsoft Excel: Feature Request

By: JustinS

JustinS — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:27:25 +0000

There’s a sort of convoluted way to do it using the MS SQL tools (SQL Server MGMT Studio, etc).

If you create a linked server to the Excel spreadsheet from a SQL instance, you can then query the tables using SQL.

Generic directions for the linked server (using the Jet provider) are here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306397

Assuming you created a linked server called “EXCEL_EXAMPLE”, you could return the values in Sheet1 with this:

select * from EXCEL_EXAMPLE…Sheet1$

By: Damon

Damon — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:14:52 +0000

Google spreadsheets actually does this. It’s pretty damn sweet.

=query(Tweets!A2:F ; “SELECT A, COUNT(B), MAX(F) GROUP BY A ORDER BY COUNT(B) DESC, MAX(F) DESC Label COUNT(B) ”, MAX(F) ” “)

More details on it here: http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/documentation/querylanguage.html

By: Matt Rude

Matt Rude — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:13:36 +0000

When you open Access, it should ask you if you would like to create a new database or open an old one, if you choose open, you can browse to an excel workbook and link it into Access. From there all data is stored in the workbook, but you are working in the Access UI.