I have problems with my records within my database, so I have a template with about 260,000 records and for each record they have 3 identification columns to determine what time period the record is from and location: one for year, one for month, and one for region. Then the information for identifying the specific item is TagName, and Description. The Problem I am having is when someone entered data into this database they entered different description for the same device, I know this because the tag name is the same. Can I write code that will go through the data base find the items with the same tag name and use one of the descriptions to replace the ones that are different to have a more uniform database. Also some devices do not have tag names so we would want to avoid the "" Case.
Also moving forward into the future I have added more columns to the database to allow for more information to be retrieved, is there a way that I can back fill the data to older records once I know that they have the same tag name and Description once the database is cleaned up? Thanks in advance for the information it is much appreciated.
I assume that this will have to be done with VBA of some sort to modify records by looking for the first record with that description and using a variable to assign that description to all the other items with the same tag name? I just am not sure of the correct VBA syntax to go about this. I assume a similar method would be used for the backfilling process?
Your question is rather broad and multifaceted, so I'll answer key parts in steps:
The Problem I am having is when someone entered data into this
database they entered different description for the same device, I
know this because the tag name is the same.
While you could fix up those inconsistencies easily enough with a bit of SQL code, it would be better to avoid those inconsistencies being possible in the first place:
Create a new table, let's call it 'Tags', with TagName and TagDescription fields, and with TagName set as the primary key. Ensure both fields have their Required setting to True and Allow Zero Length to False.
Populate this new table with all possible tags - you can do this with a one-off 'append query' in Access jargon (INSERT INTO statement in SQL).
Delete the tag description column from the main table.
Go into the Relationships view and add a one-to-many relation between the two tables, linking the TagName field in the main table to the TagName field in the Tags table.
As required, create a query that aggregates data from the two tables.
Also some devices do not have tag names so we would want to avoid the
"" Case.
In Access, the concept of an empty string ("") is different from the concept of a true blank or 'null'. As such, it would be a good idea to replace all empty strings (if there are any) with nulls -
UPDATE MyTable SET TagName = Null WHERE TagName = '';
You can then set the TagName field's Allow Zero Length property to False in the table designer.
Also moving forward into the future I have added more columns to the
database to allow for more information to be retrieved
Think less in terms of more columns than more tables.
I assume that this will have to be done with VBA of some sort to modify records
Either VBA, SQL, or the Access query designers (which create SQL code behind the scenes). In terms of being able to crunch through data the quickest, SQL is best, though pure VBA (and in particular, using the DAO object library) can be easier to understand and follow.
I'm trying to create a sub-table from another table of all the last name fields sorted A-Z which have a phone number field that isn't null. I could do this pretty easy with SQL, but I have no clue how to go about running a SQL query within Excel. I'm tempted to import the data into postgresql and just query it there, but that seems a little excessive.
For what I'm trying to do, the SQL query SELECT lastname, firstname, phonenumber WHERE phonenumber IS NOT NULL ORDER BY lastname would do the trick. It seems too simple for it to be something that Excel can't do natively. How can I run a SQL query like this from within Excel?
There are many fine ways to get this done, which others have already suggestioned. Following along the "get Excel data via SQL track", here are some pointers.
Excel has the "Data Connection Wizard" which allows you to import or link from another data source or even within the very same Excel file.
As part of Microsoft Office (and OS's) are two providers of interest: the old "Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB", and the latest "Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB". Look for them when setting up a connection (such as with the Data Connection Wizard).
Once connected to an Excel workbook, a worksheet or range is the equivalent of a table or view. The table name of a worksheet is the name of the worksheet with a dollar sign ("$") appended to it, and surrounded with square brackets ("[" and "]"); of a range, it is simply the name of the range. To specify an unnamed range of cells as your recordsource, append standard Excel row/column notation to the end of the sheet name in the square brackets.
The native SQL will (more or less be) the SQL of Microsoft Access. (In the past, it was called JET SQL; however Access SQL has evolved, and I believe JET is deprecated old tech.)
Example, reading a worksheet: SELECT * FROM [Sheet1$]
Example, reading a range: SELECT * FROM MyRange
Example, reading an unnamed range of cells: SELECT * FROM [Sheet1$A1:B10]
There are many many many books and web sites available to help you work through the particulars.
Further notes
By default, it is assumed that the first row of your Excel data source contains column headings that can be used as field names. If this is not the case, you must turn this setting off, or your first row of data "disappears" to be used as field names. This is done by adding the optional HDR= setting to the Extended Properties of the connection string. The default, which does not need to be specified, is HDR=Yes. If you do not have column headings, you need to specify HDR=No; the provider names your fields F1, F2, etc.
A caution about specifying worksheets: The provider assumes that your table of data begins with the upper-most, left-most, non-blank cell on the specified worksheet. In other words, your table of data can begin in Row 3, Column C without a problem. However, you cannot, for example, type a worksheet title above and to the left of the data in cell A1.
A caution about specifying ranges: When you specify a worksheet as your recordsource, the provider adds new records below existing records in the worksheet as space allows. When you specify a range (named or unnamed), Jet also adds new records below the existing records in the range as space allows. However, if you requery on the original range, the resulting recordset does not include the newly added records outside the range.
Data types (worth trying) for CREATE TABLE: Short, Long, Single, Double, Currency, DateTime, Bit, Byte, GUID, BigBinary, LongBinary, VarBinary, LongText, VarChar, Decimal.
Connecting to "old tech" Excel (files with the xls extention): Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=C:\MyFolder\MyWorkbook.xls;Extended Properties=Excel 8.0;. Use the Excel 5.0 source database type for Microsoft Excel 5.0 and 7.0 (95) workbooks and use the Excel 8.0 source database type for Microsoft Excel 8.0 (97), 9.0 (2000) and 10.0 (2002) workbooks.
Connecting to "latest" Excel (files with the xlsx file extension): Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source=Excel2007file.xlsx;Extended Properties="Excel 12.0 Xml;HDR=YES;"
Treating data as text: IMEX setting treats all data as text. Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source=Excel2007file.xlsx;Extended Properties="Excel 12.0 Xml;HDR=YES;IMEX=1";
(More details at http://www.connectionstrings.com/excel)
More information at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/ms141683(v=sql.90).aspx, and at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316934
Connecting to Excel via ADODB via VBA detailed at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/257819
Microsoft JET 4 details at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/275561
tl;dr; Excel does all of this natively - use filters and or tables
(http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/excel-help/filter-data-in-an-excel-table-HA102840028.aspx)
You can open excel programatically through an oledb connection and execute SQL on the tables within the worksheet.
But you can do everything you are asking to do with no formulas just filters.
click anywhere within the data you are looking at
go to data on the ribbon bar
select "Filter" its about the middle and looks like a funnel
you will have arrows on the tight hand side of each cell in the the first row of your table now
click the arrow on phone number and de-select blanks (last option)
click the arrow on last name and select a-z ordering (top option)
have a play around.. some things to note:
you can select the filtered rows and pasty them somewhere else
in the status bar on the left you will see how many rows meet you filter criteria out of the total number of rows. (e.g. 308 of 313 records found)
you can filter by color in excel 2010 on wards
Sometimes i create calculated columns that give statuses or cleaned versions of data you can then filter or sort by theses too. (e.g. like the formulae in the other answers)
DO it with filters unless you are going to do it a lot or you want to automate importing data somewhere or something.. but for completeness:
A c# option:
OleDbConnection ExcelFile = new OleDbConnection( String.Format( "Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source={0};Extended Properties=\"Excel 12.0;HDR=YES\"", filename));
ExcelFile.Open();
a handy place to start is to take a look at the schema as there may be more there than you think:
List<String> excelSheets = new List<string>();
// Add the sheet name to the string array.
foreach (DataRow row in dt.Rows) {
string temp = row["TABLE_NAME"].ToString();
if (temp[temp.Length - 1] == '$') {
excelSheets.Add(row["TABLE_NAME"].ToString());
}
}
then when you want to query a sheet:
OleDbDataAdapter da = new OleDbDataAdapter("select * from [" + sheet + "]", ExcelFile);
dt = new DataTable();
da.Fill(dt);
NOTE - Use Tables in excel!:
Excel has "tables" functionality that make data behave more like a table.. this gives you some great benefits but is not going to let you do every type of query.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/excel-help/overview-of-excel-tables-HA010048546.aspx
For tabular data in excel this is my default.. first thing i do is click into the data then select "format as table" from the home section on the ribbon. this gives you filtering, and sorting by default and allows you to access the table and fields by name (e.g. table[fieldname] ) this also allows aggregate functions on columns e.g. max and average
Might I suggest giving QueryStorm a try - it's a plugin for Excel that makes it quite convenient to use SQL in Excel.
In the SQL scripts Excel tables are visible as if they were regular database tables.
All four SQL data operations are supported: select/update/insert/delete.
The engine that executes the queries is SQLite so you can use joins, common table expressions, window functions, etc... And you get the fancy stuff like code completion, auto-formatting, symbol tooltips etc...
It has a completely free community edition for use by individuals and small companies. If you're in a company that has more than 5 employees or more than $1M in yearly revenue, you'll need a paid license but you can use a free trial key for evaluation purposes.
This blog post describes the SQL functionality of the plugin in much more detail.
Disclaimer: I'm the author.
You can do this natively as follows:
Select the table and use Excel to sort it on Last Name
Create a 2-row by 1-column advanced filter criteria, say in
E1 and E2, where E1 is empty and E2 contains the formula =C6=""
where C6 is the first data cell of the phone number column.
Select the table and use advanced filter, copy to a range, using
the criteria range in E1:E2 and specify where you want to copy the
output to
If you want to do this programmatically I suggest you use the Macro Recorder to record the above steps and look at the code.
The accepted answers here are old technology and shouldn't be attempted.
Back when this question was written, Power Query wasn't a well known option and wasn't available unless you were on the latest version of Office and installed it as a separate Add-in.
Now, Power Query is included in Excel and used by default to get data. It is the right way to do this. It is simple, fast and effective.
Here is the answer to the question in Power Query. Search on "getting started with Power Query" if you need help replicating this. Once you get started with Power Query, you'll see this is very basic and easy to do with the Advanced Editor:
let
Source = Excel.CurrentWorkbook(){[Name="Names"]}[Content],
#"Changed Type" = Table.TransformColumnTypes(Source,{{"lastname", type text}, {"firstname", type text}, {"phonenumber", type text}}),
#"Filtered Rows" = Table.SelectRows(#"Changed Type", each ([phonenumber] <> null)),
#"Removed Other Columns" = Table.SelectColumns(#"Filtered Rows",{"lastname", "firstname", "phonenumber"}),
#"Sorted Rows" = Table.Sort(#"Removed Other Columns",{{"lastname", Order.Ascending}})
in
#"Sorted Rows"
You can use SQL in Excel. It is only well hidden.
See this tutorial:
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/use-sql-statements-ms-excel-41193.html
If you need to do this once just follow Charles' descriptions, but it is also possible to do this with Excel formulas and helper columns in case you want to make the filter dynamic.
Lets assume you data is on the sheet DataSheet and starts in row 2 of the following columns:
A: lastname
B: firstname
C: phonenumber
You need two helper columns on this sheet.
D2: =if(A2 = "", 1, 0), this is the filter column, corresponding to your where condition
E2: =if(D2 <> 1, "", sumifs(D$2:D$1048576, A$2:A$1048576, "<"&A2) + sumifs(D$2:D2, A$2:A2, A2)), this corresponds to the order by
Copy down these formulas as far as your data goes.
On the sheet which should display your result create the following columns.
A: A sequence of numbers starting with 1 in row 2, this limits the total number of rows you can get (kind like a limit in sequel)
B2: =match(A2, DataSheet!$E$2:$E$1048576, 0), this is the row of the corresponding data
C2: =iferror(index(DataSheet!A$2:A$1048576, $B2), ""), this is the actual data or empty if no data exists
Copy down the formulas in B2 and C2 and copy-past column C to D and E.
If you have GDAL/OGR compiled with the against the Expat library, you can use the XLSX driver to read .xlsx files, and run SQL expressions from a command prompt. For example, from a osgeo4w shell in the same directory as the spreadsheet, use the ogrinfo utility:
ogrinfo -dialect sqlite -sql "SELECT name, count(*) FROM sheet1 GROUP BY name" Book1.xlsx
will run a SQLite query on sheet1, and output the query result in an unusual form:
INFO: Open of `Book1.xlsx'
using driver `XLSX' successful.
Layer name: SELECT
Geometry: None
Feature Count: 36
Layer SRS WKT:
(unknown)
name: String (0.0)
count(*): Integer (0.0)
OGRFeature(SELECT):0
name (String) = Red
count(*) (Integer) = 849
OGRFeature(SELECT):1
name (String) = Green
count(*) (Integer) = 265
...
Or run the same query using ogr2ogr to make a simple CSV file:
$ ogr2ogr -f CSV out.csv -dialect sqlite \
-sql "SELECT name, count(*) FROM sheet1 GROUP BY name" Book1.xlsx
$ cat out.csv
name,count(*)
Red,849
Green,265
...
To do similar with older .xls files, you would need the XLS driver, built against the FreeXL library, which is not really common (e.g. not from OSGeo4w).
You can experiment with the native DB driver for Excel in language/platform of your choice. In Java world, you can try with http://code.google.com/p/sqlsheet/ which provides a JDBC driver for working with Excel sheets directly. Similarly, you can get drivers for the DB technology for other platforms.
However, I can guarantee that you will soon hit a wall with the number of features these wrapper libraries provide. Better way will be to use Apache HSSF/POI or similar level of library but it will need more coding effort.
Microsoft Access and LibreOffice Base can open a spreadsheet as a source and run sql queries on it. That would be the easiest way to run all kinds of queries, and avoid the mess of running macros or writing code.
Excel also has autofilters and data sorting that will accomplish a lot of simple queries like your example. If you need help with those features, Google would be a better source for tutorials than me.
I might be misunderstanding me, but isn't this exactly what a pivot table does? Do you have the data in a table or just a filtered list? If its not a table make it one (ctrl+l) if it is, then simply activate any cell in the table and insert a pivot table on another sheet. Then Add the columns lastname, firstname, phonenumber to the rows section. Then Add Phone number to the filter section and filter out the null values. Now Sort like normal.
I have a table in Access linked to a SharePoint list. The table is comprised of about 15 fields whose contents are originally pulled from another data source (in Excel format). There are an additional 10 or so fields after the original 15 that make up a questionnaire (added via SharePoint) that contain answers to questions about the first 15 fields.
The data in the first 15 fields needs to be updated periodically when new data from my external source is available to download. A lot of the information will remain the same, however some of the fields within each of the rows will change and need to be updated. It is also important that the 10 fields that contain the questionnaire are not modified at all during this process.
Is there a way for me to easily update the cells that have changed using an Update query or something similar? The data does have a unique identifier column (ID NUMBER) that is present on the current SharePoint list and the external data source.
I was thinking from a logical standpoint to put the new external data into a table, find the ID Number in the SP list and new external data, compare the values in the rest of the row on the SP list to the row of the external data, and if a value is different update the cell with the value from the external data. Not sure how to accomplish this using Access queries though.
I really appreciate any help at all! If you need more information, please let me know. If you think there's a more logical way to do this, please let me know your feedback!!
Here's how to get started:
http://workerthread.wordpress.com/2009/02/03/using-access-2007-to-update-sharepoint-lists/
After you get the connection set up, it's just a matter of writing the queries correctly. If you need to run multiple queries periodically, you can setup a form with buttons, and attach some VBA code to the buttons that runs the queries.
MS Access - execute a saved query by name in VBA
I want to write a query which checks the input provided by the user with the column data of my table. i tried using LIKE and CONTAINS but it didnt work for me. eg my table data contains "Bar B Q Tonight" and if user enters "BBQ Tonight", how to deal with it? I have enabled full text-indexing for my table too. I am working on sql server 2005 in visual studio. can anybody guide me?
One approach to deal with is to create separate column on your table which will contain popular search tags or keywords, based on that you can show the results to the user.
Synonyms and acronyms are a challenge for information retrieval systems (IR).
Perhaps implement a tiny Acronym Expansion System. Acronyms and expanded terms.
When a user enters such words you need to provide a few suggestions or expanded terms. Like in Google do suggestions or you can show couple of similar terms in return for the query and let the user decide which is relevant.
you need minimum three table as I envisage it but depends on context.
one table contains stop words so you parse each word in the
entered phrase and remove all stop words.
then search individual term in acronyms table and if an
acronym has more than one definitions you can substitute acronym
for each definition and pass it back to user asking which is
relevant. if this is web environment it means list of hyperlinks.
I have a spreadsheet that lists customers, their supervisor information, and special feature codes that are listed on their account at the time the report was created.
I need to add a column to this sheet that lists the last active date that these codes were populated on the customer account.
I'm aware of how pull the info when the features were last active. However, I need to base my query based on these specific accounts and codes. What family of SQL Clauses can I use to read these preexisting values and return a corresponding date value?
Your question is a bit ambiguous. How are you populating the spreadsheet? Are you using an ETL application like SSIS or creating an Excel output from a SQL query in your database?
If you are populating an existing Excel spreadsheet, then create in that spreadsheet a new column called "Last Active Date" in preparation for populating it from the source.
If you are pulling the data from a database source, then there may be an associated history or archive table where you can find the pre-existing codes along with their corresponding dates. Here your database administrator and/or developer will be better equiped to assist you in navigating the database architecture. If the codes are no longer available in the source database, then no special SQL CLAUSE will assist. You cannot retrieve that which does not exist.