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Importing data to Excel from the CDSS REST Services

Here are some of the most convenient and useful ways to download data to view in an Excel file:

Directly calling the url with a format of "csv", from a web browser

Doing so will download a .csv (comma separated values) file, which can be opened in Excel and manipulated from there if desired. This method will download a static copy of the given data at that moment in time. This data will not automatically update with new data.

Making a "query" from an existing sheet

This method is a bit more time consuming to set up, but will give you a dynamic sheet that will keep the data up-to-date. To go this route, you must open the Excel Spreadsheet that you want to import to, and follow these steps:

  1. Go to the "Data" tab
  2. Click the "New Query" option to get a dropdown menu
  3. Click "From Other Sources" in the dropdown menu to open a dropdown submenu
  4. Click "From Web"
Steps 1 through 4
  1. A dialog should be showing in Excel with a "URL" field in it. Paste the URL from the URL generator in the REST services, and click "OK"
    Step 5
    1. When creating your URL, ensure "format" is checked in the first column, "Force parse-able response" is checked in the third column, and "csv" is chosen in the third column as well. This should give you a URL with a query like "format=csvforced" at the end of it
      Step 5.1
  2. A new dialog should show, and should pre-populate all of the correct settings as follows:
    Step 6
  3. Go ahead and click "Load" and a new sheet will be created and populated with your data
    Step 7