Worksheets ODBC and Excel linking - anyone here doing this?

[unearthed]

Before I waste hours doing another thing that's purportedly possible in VW...Has anyone here successfully linked a worksheet to Excel via ODBC? How did it go? Is it useful and is connectivity both ways?

I'm using VW2012 and have Excel 2013

[Hippocode]

Its usefull if you need to load fixed data into vw.

I can't come up with a reason to use it, we use VW <> XML <> excell to import and export our data. This way you can load everything in, compare, calculate..., not loading one result without knowing the contents as in ODBC.

Edited September 25, 2013 by hippothamus

[unearthed]

Thanks, Hmmm, I'm hoping for a two-way live link between Excel and VW, or at the least a window into VW from Excel, with the ability to do proper calculations on VW objects and all the other benefits of Excel

VW is probably the most balkanized CAD out there when (as a very small player) it should be doing the most to ease and simplify linking to other files.

[Hippocode]

Well you can get the two way direction with XML, the downside is you will need to script it, adding new parameters/columns in excell will force you to edit your script but once you "understand" the limitations its all possible

[Alexandra Beshevlieva]

Two-way live link between Excel and VW is possible, you can read data from Excel, create tables, but not to update the table. The Microsoft ODBC Excel Driver do not support UPDATE statements.

Here are more details:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/178717

"The driver will not support DELETE, UPDATE, or ALTER TABLE statements. While it is possible to update values, DELETE statements will not remove a row from a table based on an Excel spreadsheet. These operations are not supported. Basically, you can only append (insert) to a table. "

[unearthed]

Thanks for that Sasha - you've saved me a lot of time.

[Alexandra Beshevlieva]

I'm glad I could help