Add In Excel data on the Web

Some folks at Microsoft Research have developed an add in that makes it easy to use a Web page as a data source in Excel. Here is a brief description:

The Excel 2007 Web Data Add-In provides an intuitive user interface for importing textual data from any given webpage via a user’s selections of interest, such as stock quotes, weather temperature, ect, into a spreadsheet and keeping that data “up-to-date”. That is, if the webpage data changes, the spreadsheet can be updated by a click of the data “Refresh” button. Also note that the add-in can automatically learn from a user’s selection and optionally select similar items to help save time. You can put Excel sheet data over the Network. Microsoft Office 2007 apply this facility through Outlook Support and using Outlook it will done.

Would you like your employees to be able to access, from a Web page, sales data for their territories compared to sales data for other employees? Or how about a spreadsheet for standard cost calculation? Or maybe you want to use a Web page to show the profits in different areas of your company in a chart.

You can save a Microsoft Excel workbook or part of the workbook, such as a single item on the worksheet, as a Web page and make it available on an HTTP (HTTP: Internet protocol that delivers information on the World Wide Web. Makes it possible for a user with a client program to enter a URL (or click a hyperlink) and retrieve text, graphics, sound, and other digital information from a Web server.) site, an FTP (FTP: A communication protocol that makes it possible for a user to transfer files between remote locations on a network. This protocol also allows users to use FTP commands, such as listing files and folders, to work with files on a remote location.) site, a Web server (Web server: A computer that hosts Web pages and responds to requests from browsers. Also known as an HTTP server, a Web server stores files whose URLs begin with http://.), or a network server for users to view or interact with. For example, if you have sales figures set up on an Excel worksheet, you can publish the figures along with a chart to compare figures on a Web page, so that users can view or even work with the numbers in their browsers without having to open Excel.