Excel spreadsheets are fantastic bits of kit, but databases are not. Rather than making the full jump to replacing Excel with a database system, there is a halfway house you can consider.

Using SQL statements in Excel enables you to connect to an external data source, parse field or table contents and import data – all without having to input the data manually.

To connect Excel to SQL database, open Excel and then create a new workbook. Or, open an existing Excel workbook you want to connect to SQL database. In the menu bar at the top of the page click Data, ...

To retrieve data from the data source to Excel, insert the formula in a cell in the following format: =SQL.REQUEST(connection_string, output_ref, Driver_prompt, Query_text, col_names_logical) ...

Today’s author is Mike Alexander, an Excel MVP who shows us how to run a Stored Procedure to get data from a SQL server. We all know we can use MS Query to get data from a SQL server. Typically though ...