Excel Spreadsheet Automation on Dynamics NAV Data with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for Dynamics NAV provides formulas that can edit, save, and delete Dynamics NAV data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search Dynamics NAV data for a user-specified value and then organize the results into an Excel spreadsheet.

The syntax of the CDATAQUERY formula is the following:

=CDATAQUERY(Query, [Connection], [Parameters], [ResultLocation]);

This formula requires three inputs:

• Query: The declaration of the Dynamics NAV data records you want to retrieve or the modifications to be made, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as DynamicsNAVConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Dynamics NAV data, separated by semicolons.

  Before you can connect, OData Services will need to be enabled on the server. Once OData Services are enabled, you will be able to query any Services that are published on the server.

  The User and Password properties, under the Authentication section, must be set to valid Dynamics NAV user credentials. In addition, specify a URL to a valid Dynamics NAV server organization root and a ServerInstance. If there is not a Service Default Company for the server, set the Company as well.

• ResultLocation: The cell that the output of results should start from.

Pass Spreadsheet Cells as Inputs to the Query

The procedure below results in a spreadsheet that organizes all the formula inputs in the first column.

1. Define cells for the formula inputs. In addition to the connection inputs, add another input to define a criterion for a filter to be used to search Dynamics NAV data, such as Name.
2. In another cell, write the formula, referencing the cell values from the user input cells defined above. Single quotes are used to enclose values such as addresses that may contain spaces.

=CDATAQUERY("SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE Name = '"&B4&"'","http://myserver:7048="&B1&";User="&B2&";Password="&B3&";ServerInstance="&B4&";Provider=DynamicsNAV",B5)

👁 Formula inputs used in this example. (Google Apps is shown.)

3. Change the filter to change the data. 👁 The outputs of the formula. (Google Apps is shown.)