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URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/salesforce-cloud-excel-desktop.rst

⇱ Access Live Salesforce Data in Excel (Desktop) via Connect AI

Access Live Salesforce Data in Excel (Desktop) via Connect AI

👁 Dibyendu Datta
Dibyendu Datta
Lead Technology Evangelist
Use CData Connect AI to gain access to live Salesforce data from your Excel spreadsheets.

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

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

About Salesforce Data Integration

Accessing and integrating live data from Salesforce has never been easier with CData. Customers rely on CData connectivity to:

  • Access to custom entities and fields means Salesforce users get access to all of Salesforce.
  • Create atomic and batch update operations.
  • Read, write, update, and delete their Salesforce data.
  • Leverage the latest Salesforce features and functionalities with support for SOAP API versions 30.0.
  • See improved performance based on SOQL support to push complex queries down to Salesforce servers.
  • Use SQL stored procedures to perform actions like creating, retrieving, aborting, and deleting jobs, uploading and downloading attachments and documents, and more.

Users frequently integrate Salesforce data with:

  • other ERPs, marketing automation, HCMs, and more.
  • preferred data tools like Power BI, Tableau, Looker, and more.
  • databases and data warehouses.

For more information on how CData solutions work with Salesforce, check out our Salesforce integration page.


Getting Started


This setup requires a CData Connect AI instance and the CData Connect AI Add-In for Excel. To get started, sign up a free trial of Connect AI and install the free Connect AI Excel Add-In.


Configure Salesforce Connectivity for Excel

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

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
    2. 👁 Adding a Connection
  2. Select "Salesforce" from the Add Connection panel
    3. 👁 Selecting a data source
  3. Salesforce uses OAuth to authenticate. Click "Sign in" to authenticate with Salesforce. 👁 Authenticating with OAuth (Salesforce is shown).
  4. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Salesforce Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions

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

Access Live Salesforce Data in Excel

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Excel to access live Salesforce 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. Salesforce1), Table (e.g. Account), 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 Salesforce Data from Excel

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

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

    5. Live Access to Salesforce Data from Cloud Applications

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