Once you start using Excel to develop systems, budget, forecast and large tables of data you may come across the dilemma of “How do I know this is right” or “How do I truth check this”.
This post, Huis second, will add a tool to your arsenal to help you out.
The technique below allows for the rapid visual evaluation of 12 or more days/months/years of data via a chart of 2 variables and the ratio between them, utilising 2 sliders to rapidly change input variables.
DATA
Typically all businesses deal in 3 types of numbers, ie: Dates or Times, Physicals and Dollars.
Dates may include Times, Days, Weeks, Months, Years or any periods in between
Physicals directly relate to the business you are in but may include inputs and or outputs: eg: metal, tyres and cars, sugar, flour and cakes or whatever your business makes, strangely Physicals may also include Dollars, if you’re in the financial services sector. People are a Physical.
And Dollars which could be revenue, costs, cashflows or profit types of numbers.
I have found one of the best methods of looking at large tables of data is to look at a key input or output physical and then interactively scroll through the cost or income and calculate a ratio between the two.
I am going to use as an example a budget which has 40 rows of data including Physicals and Costs. But you will see that the techniques here can easily be extended to hundreds of rows. You can download this file here: Bobs Homes
The technique below allows rapid visual evaluation of 12 or more months data a chart of 2 variables and the ratio between them.
Using 2 sliders the user can rapidly move between variables and evaluate the variance over a given time frame against another variable.
The technique involves the charting of 3 ranges which in turn will be controlled by 2 sliders.
The first Range and slider will allow the selection of a Physical.
The second Range and slider will allow the selection of the Cost/Income component.
The third range will be the ratio of these, but specifically cost or income per physical.
I have attached a workbook, Bobs Homes, which contains 2 models, an example model for you to practice the following techniques on and a completed model which you can examine and pull apart to see how it works.
Load the model and scroll around and see what data is available. You will notice a time scale across the top with Physicals and Dollars down the left side. The Physicals and Dollars are grouped into common areas like inputs, outputs and costs, income and profit.
You will also note that there are 10 blank rows at the top of the worksheet. I do this so that I can perform simple calculations, charts or other workings without upsetting the data and other calculations below and for macro’s which automatically find the bottom of the data I know there is nothing below my data to upset the calculations.
Let’s jump in
SETUP
We’re going to add the following components
Headings
A2: Physical
A3: Cost/Revenue
A4: Ratio
E1: =E12
and copy across to Q1
Data
C2: 1
C3: 1
D2: =CONCATENATE(OFFSET(B$13,$C$2,0),OFFSET(C$13,$C$2,0))
D3: =CONCATENATE(OFFSET(B$22,$C$3,0),OFFSET(C$22,$C$3,0))
D4: =CONCATENATE(D3,”/”,D2)
E2: =OFFSET(E$13,$C$2,0)
E3: =OFFSET(E$22,$C$3,0)/1000
Copy E2:E4 across to Q2:Q4
Chart
Select Area D1:Q4
Insert Chart, Line Chart with or without markers to your liking
Suggestion – Place the Chart between the Data and the new Headings and formulas you have just added
Adjust the Legend to be at the Bottom of the chart
Sliders
Insert 2 Sliders
Developer Tab, Insert Scroll Bar (Form Control)
If you don’t have the Developer Tab, Have a read of: http://chandoo.org/wp/2009/05/26/excel-2007-productivity-tips/
Position the scroll bars so they are vertically next to the Chart, Use Alt whilst dragging to snap to Cell corners or edges
Link the sliders to the lookup cells
Slider 1
Current value: 1
Minimum: 1
Maximum: 7 (This is the number of Rows of Physicals data)
Incremental Change: 1
Page Change: 0
Cell Link: $C$2
Slider 2
Current value: 1
Minimum: 1
Maximum: 19 (This is the number of Rows of Cost/Revenue data)
Incremental Change: 1
Page Change: 0 (set this to maybe 10 if you have more than 30/40 rows)
Cell Link: $C$3
FINAL MODEL
You can now select a Physical by dragging the Left Scroll bar
You can now select a Revenue/Cost by dragging the Right Scroll bar
The Ratio of Cost/Revenue to the Physical is calculated and the 3 are all charted
Examine the model and see what variances in inputs/outputs can be seen.
HOW DOES THIS WORK?
The Formula in E2:Q3, are extracting the physicals and Cost/revenue data from the main body of the report by simply using an Offset function from the top of the Physicals and Cost/Revenue area.
The Distance they offset is retrieved from the control Cells C2:C3
The labels for the Physicals and Costs/Revenues are also retrieved using 2 Offsets inside a Concatenate. This is done to allow Heading Rows and Sub Headings to be displayed and joined if available from 2 separate columns.
The Chart is a simple Line Chart which is charting the 3 Data Rows (E2:Q4) against the Time Period (E1:Q1) at the top of the work area.
You can customise the chart to your content.
The 2 sliders control the control Cells C2:C3, and allow for interactive selection of Physicals and costs.
In use often you will find that one of the Physicals, Costs/Revenue or Ratio is generally much smaller in scale than the other 2 measures. Generally it is a good idea to plot the odd scale against a secondary Y axis.
Select the series line, Right Click and select Format Data Series
FUNCTIONS USED:
Offset: http://chandoo.org/wp/2008/11/19/vlookup-match-and-offset-explained-in-plain-english-spreadcheats/
Concatenate: http://chandoo.org/excel-formulas/concatenate.html
How do you truth check your data? Let us all know in the comments below:
How are you finding the content level of my posts? Let me know in the comments below:
41 Responses to “SQL Queries from Excel”
I use this method very often.
I always use =SUBSTITUTE (ColumnWithText,"'","''")
to be sure that potential apostrophe in text columns are doubled as required in SQL.
Awesome ! I don't use excel very often so the substitute thing is gold to me 🙂 thanks !
@Leonid.. that is a good technique to use substitute to clean up text apostrophes. thanks
Goal:
Generate update statement in excel where the columns that can be updated are dynamic
You want the columns which are not updated to keep the same value
(or not be overwritten with NULL values with the new generated statement)
the statement can be applied to multiple rows in excel for the same column headers
(This is why the '$' exist for the column headers that are being set)
A1 = First_Name
B1 = Last_Name
C1 = Middle_Name
="
UPDATE PERSONS "&CHAR(10)&
" SET 1 = 1 "&CHAR(10)&
IF(LEN(TRIM($A2))=0,"",", "&$A$1&" = '"&$A2&"'"&CHAR(10))&
IF(LEN(TRIM($B2))=0,"",", "&$B$1&" = '"&$B2&"'"&CHAR(10))&
IF(LEN(TRIM($C2))=0,"",", "&$C$1&" = '"&$C2&"'"&CHAR(10))&
" WHERE name = 'staticordynamicvalue' AND gender = 'staticordynamicvalue'
"
Output (if all columns are set):
UPDATE PERSONS SET 1 = 1,
First_Name = 'Joe',
Last_Name = 'ORien',
Middle_Name = 'Richard'
WHERE age = 28 AND gender = 'm'
Output (if only First _Name (A1) is set):
UPDATE PERSONS SET 1 = 1,
First_Name = 'Joe'
WHERE age = 28 AND gender = 'm'
Possibly my post above is confusing without the actual table to look at. I will do the same example with the table used here. Instead of an insert statement I will generate an update statement for the columns, Cust_Name, Phone & E-mail
where we can generate an update statement for any column individually or together. 🙂 I hope this can help.
=”
UPDATE table “&CHAR(10)&
” SET 1 = 1 “&CHAR(10)&
IF(LEN(TRIM($A2))=0,”",”,Cust_Name = ‘”&$B3&”‘”&CHAR(10))&
IF(LEN(TRIM($B2))=0,”",”, Phone = ‘”&$C3&”‘”&CHAR(10))&
IF(LEN(TRIM($C2))=0,”",”, E-mail = ‘”&$D3&”‘”&CHAR(10))&
” WHERE Cust_Name = ’Bill Gates'
”
Thanks, it has been very useful !
It saved me at least 30 minutes, and time is the most expensive thing in our world...
Hey Paul,
What if any of A2, B2, or C2 is a date field?
The formula above is taking date as string. Any solution?
Even I faced the same problem. If any of the above columns are date, it is taken as string. Any work around for this?
I've found the string concatenation method works well.
At the risk of sounding spammy I would mention that
if it's something your are doing regularly it might be worth investigating a tools
that make it easier, such as QueryCell, an excel add-in I've developed.
It gives you a right click menu option that will produce and then customize insert statements for the selected region of Excel data.
Cheers
Sam
Hi,
For inserting the excel data to your SQL table, you can create insert statements in excel file according to your columns.
then just execute the statements all at once, it will insert the required data to sql server table.
thanks,
How...?
I tried to generate t-sql insert queries from the above example
="insert into values('" &A2 &"','" & B2& "');"
but it generates on one record instead of all records from excel sheet.
I'm using Excel 2003 and the excel sheet contains 922 records.
Most data bases can generate DDL for any object but not a lot of them allow generation of INSERT statements for the table data.
The workaround is to make use of ETL Tools for transferring data across servers. However, there exists a need to generate INSERT statements from the tables for porting data.
Simplest example is when small or large amount of data needs to be taken out on a removable storage media and copied to a remote location, INSERT..VALUES statements come handy.
There is a number of scripts available to perform this data transformation task. The problem with those scripts that all of them database specific and they do not work with textiles
Advanced ETL processor can generate Insert scripts from any data source including text files
http://www.dbsoftlab.com/generating-insert-statements.html
Super Aiticle. Thanks for this post.
I used to deal with the same problem, until found this awsome and free tool.
http://www.xtrategics.com/shapp/String%20Handler.application
regards,
Hi ,
i need a sql query to update a DB in excel 2010..
i have the query(SQL) for insert in excel as ,
="insert into customers values('" &B3 &"','" & C3 & "','"&D3&"');"
similarly i need q sql query for update in excel
i want clear formulas only for insert,delete,update,select
Hi !
I would like to thank you so much ! This trick saves me a lot of time. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it !
-Ankit
You may like to take advantage of this unique tool 'Excel to Database'.
(free for 60 days)http://leansoftware.net The Excel-to-Database utility enables you to validate and transfer data from Microsoft Excel or text file to a database table or stored procedure process. Any text data can be pasted into the application, this may be from another Excel sheet or from text files such as CSV format. SQL Server, Access, MySQL, FoxPro .. Application features Some unique features of Excel to Database include: ?Easy to use color coded/traffic light data validation ?Data is validated as soon it is typed or pasted into Excel ?Upload Excel data to a table or stored procedure process ?Allow default values ?Mandatory/must have fields can be specified ?Allow user friendly column names ?Allow excel formula / calculated fields ?Multiple database type support: Microsoft SQL Server, Access, MySQL and others (to be tested) ?Supports Custom SQL scripts, with SQL/Excel merge fields ?Database validation checks ensure you comply with any rules defined within the database ?Multiple Task configuration ?For co-operative use, Tasks can be shared across a network ?Task configuration is password protected http://leansoftware.net
Its works fine for single record.
I want to update 1000 records in DB. Can you help me.
[...] [...]
Excel database tasks 2.3 (EDT)
you can now load directly from any source into Excel, validate and upload to most SQL database platforms including SQL Server with automatic transaction wrapping.
You can also use EDT as a multi-user application by easily designing your own Edit data tasks and deploying EDT on your users workstations.
Automatically creates UPDATE/INSERT statements based on the primary key. Default SQL can be modified as you require.
Makes the best use if Excel power - formatting, formula, validation, conditional formatting.. without creating any problematic spreadsheets!
Release details on the blog:
http://leansoftware.net/forum/en-us/blog.aspx
Thanks for the interest
Richard
Thanks for the valueable information, it really help me alot.
Thanks again.
As I do with a field of type date?
= "UPDATE SET business datetime =" & "'" & A2 & "' WHERE ID =" & B2 & ""
the date is not 03/10/2012 is 41246. Even putting quotes ...
Please show how to do it properly with dates as well as when those dates are empty. Thanks!
In a separate column make the date to Text using below formula
=TEXT(C2,"mm/dd/yyyy") Then Refer this text column in your update statement
Great post saved me a a load of time on a task i had to complete
thanks for sharing article... helpful!
Thanks 🙂
Hello,
Nice article.
I have also created one tool for create table script using excel http://devssolution.com/create-table-in-sql-using-excel/
Please check it.
Thanks & Regards,
Sandeep Bhadauriya
[…] Excel formula used – http://chandoo.org/wp/2008/09/22/sql-insert-update-statements-from-csv-files/ […]
If any one can help me out with following.
I want to know a SQL query of below excel formula:
=LOOKUP(0,-SEARCH(LEFT(F2,LEN($B$2:$B$100))+0,$B$2:$B$100),$A$2:$A$100)
Excel data is as below;
Name Codes
names1 992
names2 57
names3 856
names4 297
names5 63
if there is a number (29756789) then it should search in sql by taking the prefix of number (297) from (29756789) and return the name field (name4).
Codes can be of two digit or three.
Thanks
Here is a link to an Online automator to convert CSV files to SQL Insert Into statements:
CSV-to-SQL: http://csv-to-sql.herokuapp.com
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1570387/how-to-insert-data-from-an-excel-sheet-into-a-database-table/37409790#37409790
="INSERT INTO table VALUES (" &A3 &",'" & B3 & "','"&C3&"','" & D3 & "','" & E3 & "'," & F3 & "," & G3 & "," & H3 & ",'" & I3 & "'," & J3 & ");"
B3 has date data that looks like 9/22/17 but with the formula above b3 is coming out as 43000?
how do i fix that?
I just want to insert the Excel records in Sql table without Visiting SQL.
basically i m just want to run a command in Excel Only.
Help Me..plz..?
Hi I have a question maybe you guys have an answer for me
="insert into customers values('" &B3 &"','" & C3 & "','"&D3&"');" where B3, C3, D3 refer to above table data.
the above technique works but is there a way to write it so it takes a range instead of individual columns. because I have an extremely wide table
="insert into customers values(B3:D3);" where B3, C3, D3 refer to above table data.
Awsome
Its Great Effort to help everyone who working with excel.
Thanks for the mini-tutorial on SQL from Excel. Didi it several years ago, but couldn't remember the syntax! All the dialogue was really helpful as well!
The formula above is taking date as string. Any solution?