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  • Using Office Data Connection files (.odc) and the DataConnections Web Part in SharePoint to Specify External Data Connections in Newly Created Excel Workbooks.

    Today's author, Christian Stich, a Program Manager on the Excel Services team, discusses how to enable users to quickly and easily create workbooks using external data connections specified in server based data connection files. Overview Excel and Excel Services support importing external data, which can be specified using connections embedded in the workbook itself or in Office Data Connection (.odc) files. One of the advantages of using .odc files is that any updates to the external data connection...
  • Example file for PivotTable / Data Validation Trick

    Recently I posted an article discussing how PivotTables can be used on Excel Services to mimick the Data Validation feature . The author, Dany Hoter, sent me a copy of the file he used in the example screen shots and I never got around to posting it for our readers. Here's a short description of the example file from Dany: The example implements a scenario of calculating the pricing for car insurance based on the details entered in a form. The form can be collected on paper and entered manually into Excel or collected online and fed into Excel services to perform the calculation. Each value is connected to a numeric value. High values means less risk to insure this car to this driver. More driving experience, safer car, better neighborhood etc. Of course all data is completely fake and does not represent any real data. Each field might have a different number of possible values, some have only Yes/No and some might have 10 different values. All list of values where extended to the last row so to avoid blank appearing as an option for input. We can’t really prevent the user from choosing multiple options or the all option so an error message is displayed when the user does that. The file can be downloaded from here . Read More...
  • A PivotTable Trick That Brings Data Validation to Excel Services

    Excel has a feature called Data Validation that controls the possible values a user might enter into a cell or a range of cells. As you can see there are many options for validating data entry. The most popular is probably validating against a list of values. The list can be included in the validation definition or can be a region in the sheet referenced from the dialog. Recently I saw an example created by a customer that validates input using a PivotTable instead of data validation. The idea is to use only the report filter area of the PivotTable and to use the values selected in multiple filter fields as inputs for a model: In the example you see multiple input fields and when clicking the filter icon the user will see a list of values and can choose one. The advantage of this method is easier maintenance of multiple lists of values used for validating multiple fields. The range that the PivotTable is based on looks a bit odd because usually PivotTables are based on rectangular ranges...
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