Help with connecting Filemaker 8 & Excel 2004

[Diomedes]

Hi,

OK, since Filemaker 8 databases cannot be connected directly with Excel, how in God’s name do I connect them?? I downloaded the iODBC driver, the FileMaker driver (from www.filemaker.com/odbc), but I keep getting an error when Microsoft Query runs. I’m at a total loss here...can anyone help me?? Please?

I want to use my FM database as the source to import into Excel.

 

[ahunter3]

Is this (necessarily, i.e., has to be) a recurrent task that occurs from within Excel without you/the end user having to actually DO SOMETHING in FileMaker? Or is it a less-recurrent task such that you could tolerate going into FileMaker and running a script?

If it has to be fully automated from within Excel: I'm not much of an Excel geek, can Excel execute an AppleScript from a button? If so, AppleScript can tell FileMaker to execute a FileMaker script and you're home free.

If it doesn't have to be fully automated within Excel (or, for that matter, even if it does, see above): Do a FileMaker script that isolates and exports the dataset you want as a plain text tab-delimited file. That file can be slurped into Excel readily enough.

Do the parameters of what dataset you actually want need to originate in Excel (i.e., values in Excel will determine the query params)? Again, if you can embed AppleScript within Excel, AppleScript can tell FileMaker to accept those values into global fields which you can reference in the FileMaker script to perform the Find.

If you can't embed AppleScript in Excel workbook files, you may need to create and compile a standalone AppleScript application and run it whenever you want to do this operation. (Excel, obviously, is AppleScriptable itself, so you can use AS to abstract out the relevant Excel values and then pass them to FmPro)

 

[Diomedes]

Is this (necessarily, i.e., has to be) a recurrent task that occurs from within Excel without you/the end user having to actually DO SOMETHING in FileMaker? Or is it a less-recurrent task such that you could tolerate going into FileMaker and running a script?

If it has to be fully automated from within Excel: I'm not much of an Excel geek, can Excel execute an AppleScript from a button? If so, AppleScript can tell FileMaker to execute a FileMaker script and you're home free.

If it doesn't have to be fully automated within Excel (or, for that matter, even if it does, see above): Do a FileMaker script that isolates and exports the dataset you want as a plain text tab-delimited file. That file can be slurped into Excel readily enough.

Do the parameters of what dataset you actually want need to originate in Excel (i.e., values in Excel will determine the query params)? Again, if you can embed AppleScript within Excel, AppleScript can tell FileMaker to accept those values into global fields which you can reference in the FileMaker script to perform the Find.

If you can't embed AppleScript in Excel workbook files, you may need to create and compile a standalone AppleScript application and run it whenever you want to do this operation. (Excel, obviously, is AppleScriptable itself, so you can use AS to abstract out the relevant Excel values and then pass them to FmPro)

I think what I am trying to do is fairly simple: I am updating an issue-tracking database in FileMaker. For the benefit of my cross-platform colleagues, I want to have a semi-dynamic, but uni-directional, update into Excel: when I update something in FM, and run the query in Excel, it will be updated, without having to import it manually each time.

The otherwise-excellent Office 2004: The Missing Manual describes what I want to do exactly. However, I was told on one of the Excel newsgroups that the method described in the book only works for FM 5.5 and below.

I'm not proficient enough to write a script in either application; and for one-shot exports, FileMaker 8 has an "Excel Maker" function that works well enough. However, it would be nice to be able to do it right from within Excel.

So, from what I can tell, it comes down to using FileMaker as the ODBC source.

 

[dank]

I think what I am trying to do is fairly simple: I am updating an issue-tracking database in FileMaker. For the benefit of my cross-platform colleagues, I want to have a semi-dynamic, but uni-directional, update into Excel: when I update something in FM, and run the query in Excel, it will be updated, without having to import it manually each time.

The otherwise-excellent Office 2004: The Missing Manual describes what I want to do exactly. However, I was told on one of the Excel newsgroups that the method described in the book only works for FM 5.5 and below.

I'm not proficient enough to write a script in either application; and for one-shot exports, FileMaker 8 has an "Excel Maker" function that works well enough. However, it would be nice to be able to do it right from within Excel.

So, from what I can tell, it comes down to using FileMaker as the ODBC source.

I am not sure why you want import to Excel. Why don't you do everything in FM? There is not much what Excel can do and FM cannot.

 

[ahunter3]

I am not sure why you want import to Excel. Why don't you do everything in FM? There is not much what Excel can do and FM cannot.

Well, Excel does do lots of nice charts with very little effort

But yeah, good point. Why is the data going into Excel as a destination in the first place? If it's a shared /multi-user environment kind of dataset, it really belongs in FileMaker.