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URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/quickbooks-excel-cdataquery.rst

⇱ Excel Spreadsheet Automation on QuickBooks Data with the QUERY Formula

Excel Spreadsheet Automation on QuickBooks Data with the QUERY Formula

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Pull data from QuickBooks, automate spreadsheets, and more with the QUERY formula.

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

About QuickBooks Data Integration

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

  • Access both local and remote company files.
  • Connect across editions and regions: QuickBooks Premier, Professional, Enterprise, and Simple Start edition 2002+, as well as Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and UK editions from 2003+.
  • Use SQL stored procedures to perform actions like voiding or clearing transactions, merging lists, searching entities, and more.

Customers regularly integrate their QuickBooks data with preferred tools, like Power BI, Tableau, or Excel, and integrate QuickBooks data into their database or data warehouse.


Getting Started


The syntax of the CDATAQUERY formula is the following: 

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

This formula requires three inputs:

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

  • Connection: Either the connection name, such as QuickBooksConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to QuickBooks data, separated by semicolons.

    When you are connecting to a local QuickBooks instance, you do not need to set any connection properties.

    Requests are made to QuickBooks through the Remote Connector. The Remote Connector runs on the same machine as QuickBooks and accepts connections through a lightweight, embedded Web server. The server supports SSL/TLS, enabling users to connect securely from remote machines.

    The first time you connect, authorize the Remote Connector with QuickBooks. See the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation for a guide.

  • 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 QuickBooks data, such as Type.
  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.
    3. =CDATAQUERY("SELECT * FROM Customers WHERE Type = '"&B4&"'","URL="&B1&";User="&B2&";Password="&B3&";Provider=QuickBooks",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.)

Ready to get started?

Download a free trial of the Excel Add-In for QuickBooks to get started:

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Learn more:

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Excel Add-In for QuickBooks

The QuickBooks Excel Add-In is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live data from QuickBooks directly from Microsoft Excel.

Use Excel to read, write, and update QuickBooks Customers, Transactions, Invoices, Sales Receipts, etc. Perfect for mass imports / exports / updates, data cleansing & de-duplication, Excel based data analysis, and more!