Excel Spreadsheet Automation on Reckon Data with the QUERY Formula

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

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as ReckonConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Reckon data, separated by semicolons.

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

  Requests to Reckon are made through the Remote Connector. The Remote Connector runs on the same machine as Reckon 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 to your company file, authorize the Remote Connector with Reckon. 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 Reckon 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.

=CDATAQUERY("SELECT * FROM Customers WHERE Type = '"&B4&"'","User="&B1&";Password="&B2&";URL="&B3&";Provider=Reckon",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.)