Excel Spreadsheet Automation on Quickbase Data with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for Quickbase provides formulas that can edit, save, and delete Quickbase data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search Quickbase 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 Quickbase data records you want to retrieve or the modifications to be made, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as QuickBaseConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Quickbase data, separated by semicolons.

  User Authentication Method

  To authenticate with user credentials, specify the following connection properties:

  1. Set the User and Password.
  2. If your application requires an ApplicationToken;, you must provide it otherwise an error will be thrown. You can find the ApplicationToken under SpecificApp > Settings > App management > App properties > Advanced settings > Security options > Manage Application Token.

  User Token Authentication

  To authenticate with a user token, specify the following connection properties:

  1. Set UserToken and you are ready to connect. You can find the UserToken under Quick Base > My Preferences > My User Information > Manage User Tokens.
• 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 Quickbase data, such as Column2.
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 SampleTable_1 WHERE Column2 = '"&B5&"'","User="&B1&";Password="&B2&";Domain="&B3&";ApplicationToken="&B4&";Provider=QuickBase",B6)

👁 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.)