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

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

Configure Facebook Ads Connectivity for Excel

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

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

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

3. Facebook Ads uses OAuth to authenticate. Click "Sign in" to authenticate with Facebook Ads. 👁 Authenticating with OAuth (Salesforce is shown).
   
4. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Facebook Ads Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions
   

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

Access Live Facebook Ads Data in Excel

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Excel to access live Facebook Ads 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. FacebookAds1), Table (e.g. AdAccounts), 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 Facebook Ads Data from Excel

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

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

Live Access to Facebook Ads Data from Cloud Applications

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