Excel Spreadsheet Automation with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for LinkedIn Ads provides formulas that can query LinkedIn Ads data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search LinkedIn Ads data for a user-specified value and then organize the results into an Excel spreadsheet.

The syntax of the CDATAQUERY formula is the following: =CDATAQUERY(Query, [Connection], [Parameters], [ResultLocation]);

This formula requires three inputs:

• Query: The declaration of the LinkedIn Ads data records you want to retrieve, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as LinkedInAdsConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to LinkedIn Ads data, separated by semicolons.

  LinkedIn Ads uses the OAuth authentication standard. OAuth requires the authenticating user to interact with LinkedIn using the browser. See the OAuth section in the Help documentation for a guide.

• ResultLocation: The cell that the output of results should start from.

Pass Spreadsheet Cells as Inputs to the Query

The procedure below results in a spreadsheet that organizes all the formula inputs in the first column.

1. Define cells for the formula inputs. In addition to the connection inputs, add another input to define a criterion for a filter to be used to search LinkedIn Ads data, such as EntityId.
2. In another cell, write the formula, referencing the cell values from the user input cells defined above. Single quotes are used to enclose values such as addresses that may contain spaces.
=CDATAQUERY("SELECT * FROM Analytics WHERE EntityId = '"&B4&"'","OAuthClientId="&B1&";OAuthClientSecret="&B2&";CallbackURL="&B3&";Provider=LinkedInAds",B5)
3. Change the filter to change the data.