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URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/bigquery-cloud-excel-desktop.rst

⇱ Access Live BigQuery Data in Excel (Desktop) via Connect AI

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

👁 Dibyendu Datta
Dibyendu Datta
Lead Technology Evangelist
Use CData Connect AI to gain access to live BigQuery data from your Excel spreadsheets.

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 BigQuery data directly within Excel, facilitating data analysis, collaboration, calculations, and more.This article shows how to connect to BigQuery in your Connect AI instance and access and update live BigQuery data in Excel spreadsheets.

CData Connect AI provides a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for BigQuery, allowing you to easily access live BigQuery 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 BigQuery, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return BigQuery data.

About BigQuery Data Integration

CData simplifies access and integration of live Google BigQuery data. Our customers leverage CData connectivity to:

  • Simplify access to BigQuery with broad out-of-the-box support for authentication schemes, including OAuth, OAuth JWT, and GCP Instance.
  • Enhance data workflows with Bi-directional data access between BigQuery and other applications.
  • Perform key BigQuery actions like starting, retrieving, and canceling jobs; deleting tables; or insert job loads through SQL stored procedures.

Most CData customers are using Google BigQuery as their data warehouse and so use CData solutions to migrate business data from separate sources into BigQuery for comprehensive analytics. Other customers use our connectivity to analyze and report on their Google BigQuery data, with many customers using both solutions.

For more details on how CData enhances your Google BigQuery experience, check out our blog post: https://www.cdata.com/blog/what-is-bigquery


Getting Started


This setup requires a CData Connect AI instance and the CData Connect AI Add-In for Excel. To get started, sign up a free trial of Connect AI and install the free Connect AI Excel Add-In.


Configure BigQuery Connectivity for Excel

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

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
    2. 👁 Adding a Connection
  2. Select "BigQuery" from the Add Connection panel
    3. 👁 Selecting a data source
  3. BigQuery uses OAuth to authenticate. Click "Sign in" to authenticate with BigQuery. 👁 Authenticating with OAuth (Salesforce is shown).
  4. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add BigQuery Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions

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

Access Live BigQuery Data in Excel

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Excel to access live BigQuery 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. GoogleBigQuery1), Table (e.g. Orders), 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 BigQuery Data from Excel

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

  1. Update any cell or cells with changes you want to push to BigQuery (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 BigQuery, and a notification will appear when the update is complete

    5. Live Access to BigQuery Data from Cloud Applications

    Now, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live BigQuery 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.