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

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

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

👁 Dibyendu Datta
Dibyendu Datta
Lead Technology Evangelist
Use CData Connect AI to gain access to live SharePoint 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 SharePoint data directly within Excel, facilitating data analysis, collaboration, calculations, and more.This article shows how to connect to SharePoint in your Connect AI instance and access and update live SharePoint data in Excel spreadsheets.

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

About SharePoint Data Integration

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

  • Access data from a wide range of SharePoint versions, including Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and above, and SharePoint Online.
  • Access all of SharePoint thanks to support for Hidden and Lookup columns.
  • Recursively scan folders to create a relational model of all SharePoint data.
  • Use SQL stored procedures to upload and download documents and attachments.

Most customers rely on CData solutions to integrate SharePoint data into their database or data warehouse, while others integrate their SharePoint data with preferred data tools, like Power BI, Tableau, or Excel.

For more information on how customers are solving problems with CData's SharePoint solutions, refer to our blog: Drivers in Focus: Collaboration Tools.


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 SharePoint Connectivity for Excel

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

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
    2. 👁 Adding a Connection
  2. Select "SharePoint" from the Add Connection panel
    3. 👁 Selecting a data source
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to SharePoint.

    Set the URL property to the base SharePoint site or to a sub-site. This allows you to query any lists and other SharePoint entities defined for the site or sub-site.

    The User and Password properties, under the Authentication section, must be set to valid SharePoint user credentials when using SharePoint On-Premise.

    If you are connecting to SharePoint Online, set the SharePointEdition to SHAREPOINTONLINE along with the User and Password connection string properties. For more details on connecting to SharePoint Online, see the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation

    👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  4. Click Save & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add SharePoint Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions

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

Access Live SharePoint Data in Excel

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Excel to access live SharePoint 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. SharePoint1), Table (e.g. MyCustomList), 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 SharePoint Data from Excel

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

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

    5. Live Access to SharePoint Data from Cloud Applications

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

Ready to get started?

Learn more about CData Connect AI or sign up for free trial access:

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