Excel For Mac Web Query Example With Login And Password

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Excel Web Query - What in the world is that? If you are like the other 99.9% of MS Excel users, you probably have never heard of microsoft excel web queries (note: statistic made up).

Excel web queries are powerful! Web queries are basically like having a web browser built into Excel that attempts to format the content, putting individual pieces of data into separate cells. You can then use Excel formulas (like =A1/B2) to work directly with the data you've downloaded. And you don't have to know anything about perl, cgi, php, javascript, etc.

Getting Started with Sample Excel Web Queries

I am trying to automate few web queries for my company's website. The website is password secured and everytime the excel is opened, it asks for the UID and pwd via the windows security pop-up. Is there a way to pass the credentials to windows security login via VBA. PS: I tried to open a web browser, connect to it and then run the. This means I have to set the macro up to open the webpage and then automatically enter the user ID and password. I found a very useful tutorial on accessing google webpages via VBA, but have expanded the detail to show excel 2007 instructions and the method for defining the correct HTMLDoc elements for any webpage. First of all you need to.

The example web queries that come with Excel are usually for importing stock quote data into Excel. For more information about using web queries to download Stock Quotes into Excel, take a look at the Excel Stock Quotes Template.

Although importing stock quotes into Excel happened to be the reason I came across Excel web queries, I have since found many other ways to use them.

It is not the web query itself that is the secret that this article is about. Instead, it's the ability to make a DYNAMIC Web Query!

By dynamic, I'm not talking about using 'refresh' to update the data. What I mean is the ability to change the parameters of the web query, such as typing in a new stock symbol into a cell and having the table update automatically.

If you find yourself using the internet to gather data by filling out forms and copying and pasting data over and over, an excel web query might be the solution to your monotonous woes. It's not always going to be better, and it's not always going to work, but it's worth a try, especially since a simple web query could boost your productivity!

Excel Web Query '.iqy' Files

The real key to creating a dynamic excel web query is to create your own '.iqy' file. In it's basic form, the '.iqy' file is simply a TEXT file with three main lines:

You can create the file using a simple text editor! Most text editors will save a new file with the .txt extension, but you can change the extension to .iqy after you create your text file. If it is already a .iqy file and you want to edit it, you may need to right-click on it to select NotePad or WordPad (or some other text editor) to open it.

The third line is the important one! It's simply the URL or web page address. Notice that it contains two parameters. If you don't know what parameters are for, just browse the web for a while and pay attention to what shows up in the address bar of your browser. Go to Google.com for instance, and look up 'excel web query'.

Parameter name / value pairs are listed after the '?' in the URL and are separated by an '&'.

Make the Web Query Dynamic

To make the query dynamic, replace the value of each parameter in the web query file (queryname.iqy) with:

Want to see how this would apply to a Google search? The form that I used above consists of HTML code that looks like this:

Notice that 'q' is the name of the parameter, and the action tells you what the URL should be. The dynamic web query file for a simple google search would look like this:


Let's Create a Web Query

  1. Open up a text editor and copy the Google example. Save the file as GoogleSearch.iqy
  2. Open up Excel and enter a search term in Cell B3
  3. Open the web query file you just saved (GoogleSearch.iqy) by double-clicking on the file, or open Excel and go to Data > Existing Connections > Browse for More.
  4. When prompted for the search term, enter =B3. If that doesn't work, just enter a search term for now.

Play around with the web query options and properties by right-clicking within the query results and selecting Parameters or Data Range Properties or Edit Query.

When you go to Edit Query, you can choose to select a specific portion or table within the page or the entire page (by clicking on one of the yellow arrow boxes in the preview). Then, you can save your new query as a .iqy file and look at what parameters it uses.

When you have the query looking just the way you want it, save the Excel web query (an icon or button for saving the web query is in the 'Edit Query' window. When you save the new query, your '.iqy' file will include the options you have selected.

Other Example Web Queries

Below are a few examples of .iqy files that you might try. Websites often change, or they may change the way their APIs work, so these examples might not work forever.

Example 1: Get historical daily stock prices from Investopedia. Note that the start and end dates are text, so if you are setting up date parameters in Excel, the cells you link to need to be text rather than date values. This query uses 3 parameters: Symbol, StartDate, EndDate.

Excel For Mac Web Query Example With Login And Password Free

See this article for other sources for historical stock quotes.

Example 2: Get data from a published Google Spreadsheet. See my article Excel Stock Quotes in Excel to see how you can publish a Google Spreadsheet and then use a web query to get the data into Excel.

Become a Web Query Wiz

Take a few minutes to think about what mundane or repetitive tasks YOU do on the internet, particularly cases where you go to the same sites over and over to get data. If you find yourself copying and pasting or re-typing information into Excel so that you can perform calculations with the data, you may have found an ideal use for an excel web query.

There are two main things that you need in order to become a Web Query Wiz.

  1. A working knowledge of Excel formulas. By this, I mean the ability to use text-manipulation and other formulas. A GREAT book for both learning and reference (and the one that I use all the time) is John Walkenbach's 'Excel Formulas'. If you are an avid Excel user, it will probably be the best investment you will make for a long time! The only problem I have with the book is that I need TWO copies - one for work and one for home.
  2. A working knowledge of HTML. This is the hard part unless you are a web designer or programmer. The articles listed in the side bar will help to some extent, but ultimately this issue was the reason why I didn't write a more detailed tutorial. Something that will be a great help is to learn about how <form> tags work. Here is my favorite reference.

If you found this article interesting, be sure to check out some of my other Excel tips.

- Jon Wittwer, President
Vertex42, LLC

Cite This Article

To reference this article from your website or blog, please use something similar to the following citation:

Wittwer, J.W., 'Excel Web Query Secrets Revealed' From Vertex42.com, 2003

The CData ODBC driver for LDAP uses the standard ODBC interface to link LDAP objects with applications like Microsoft Access and Excel. Follow the steps below to use Microsoft Query to import LDAP objects into a spreadsheet and provide values to a parameterized query from cells in a spreadsheet.

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

To establish a connection, the following properties under the Authentication section must be provided:

Excel For Mac Web Query

  • Valid User and Password credentials (e.g., DomainBobF or cn=Bob F,ou=Employees,dc=Domain).
  • Server information, including the IP or host name of the Server, as well as the Port.

  • BaseDN: This will limit the scope of LDAP searches to the height of the distinguished name provided.

    Note: Specifying a narrow BaseDN may greatly increase performance; for example, cn=users,dc=domain will only return results contained within cn=users and its children.

Mac

Excel For Mac Web Query Example With Login And Password

You can then work with live LDAP objects in Excel.

Excel For Mac Web Query Example With Login And Password Change

  1. In Excel, open the Data tab and choose From Other Sources -> From Microsoft Query.
  2. Choose the LDAP DSN. Select the option to use Query Wizard to create/edit queries.
  3. In the Query Wizard, expand the node for the table you would like to import into your spreadsheet. Select the columns you want to import and click the arrow to add them to your query. Alternatively, select the table name to add all columns for that table.
  4. The Filter Data page allows you to specify criteria. For example, you can limit results by setting a date range.
  5. If you want to use parameters in your query, select the option to edit the query in Microsoft Query.

  6. To set a parameter in the query, you will need to modify the SQL statement directly. To do this, click the SQL button in the Query Editor. If you set filter criteria earlier, you should have a WHERE clause already in the query.

    To use a parameter, use a '?' character as the wildcard character for a field's value in the WHERE clause. For example, if you are importing the User, you can set 'CN=?'.

  7. Close the SQL dialog when you are finished editing the SQL statement. You will be prompted to enter a parameter value. In the next step, you will select a cell to provide this value. So, leave the box in the dialog blank.

  8. Close Microsoft Query. The Import Data dialog is displayed. Enter a cell where results should be imported.

  9. Close the Import Data dialog. You will be prompted to enter a parameter value. Click the button next to the parameter box to select a cell. Select the option to automatically refresh the spreadsheet when the value changes.
Mac The data is now imported into Excel. When you change the value in cell B1, the data will be filtered by the specified search criteria.