Access Live Airtable Data in Excel (Desktop) via Connect AI

Microsoft Excel is a widely used spreadsheet software application, primarily used for tasks related to data management, analysis, and visualization. When combined with CData Connect AI, 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 your Connect AI instance and access and update live Airtable data in Excel spreadsheets.

CData Connect AI provides a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for Airtable, allowing you to easily access live Airtable data in Excel for the web. Simply use the Connect AI Add-In to query live data (or write your own). Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes all supported query operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Airtable, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Airtable data.

Configure Airtable Connectivity for Excel

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

1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
👁 Adding a Connection

2. Select "Airtable" from the Add Connection panel
👁 Selecting a data source

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.
   👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Airtable Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating 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 CData Connect AI 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 CData Connect AI Add-In and install the Add-in. 👁 Install the Add-In
   
4. Click Data and open the CData Connect AI Add-In.
5. In the Add-In panel, click Authorize to authenticate with your CData Connect AI instance 👁 Authorizing the Add-In
   
6. In the CData Connect AI panel in Excel, click Import 👁 CData Connect AI panel in Excel
   
7. Choose a Connection (e.g. Airtable1), Table (e.g. SampleTable_1), and Columns to import 👁 CData Connect AI panel in Excel
   
8. Optionally add Filters, Sorting, and a Limit 👁 Choosing a Connection, Table, and Columns
   
9. Click Execute to import the data 👁 Executing the Query
   

Update Airtable Data from Excel

In addition to viewing Airtable data in Excel, CData Connect AI 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 CData Connect AI 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") 👁 Executing the update (Salesforce is shown).
   
4. Click Execute to push the updates to Airtable, and a notification will appear when the update is complete

Live Access to Airtable Data from Cloud Applications

Now, 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.

👁 Imported data (Salesforce is shown)


Try CData Connect AI and get real-time data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications.