Excel Spreadsheet Automation with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for MailChimp provides formulas that can edit, save, and delete MailChimp data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search MailChimp 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 MailChimp data records you want to retrieve or the modifications to be made, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as MailChimpConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to MailChimp data, separated by semicolons.

  You can set the APIKey to the key you generate in your account settings, or, instead of providing your APIKey, you can use the OAuth standard to authenticate the application. OAuth can be used to enable other users to access their own data. To authenticate using OAuth, you will need to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL by registering an app with MailChimp.

  See the "Getting Started" chapter in the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

• 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 MailChimp data, such as Contact_Country.
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 Lists WHERE Contact_Country = '"&B2&"'","APIKey="&B1&";Provider=MailChimp",B3)
3. Change the filter to change the data.