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

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

Access Live Zoho Books Data in Excel (Desktop) via Connect AI

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

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

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 Zoho Books Connectivity for Excel

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

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

    Zoho Books uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate using OAuth, create an app to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties. See the OAuth section of the Getting Started guide in the Help documentation for an authentication guide.

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

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

Access Live Zoho Books Data in Excel

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Excel to access live Zoho Books 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. ZohoBooks1), Table (e.g. INVOICES), 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

Live Access to Zoho Books Data from Cloud Applications

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