HOWTO: How to Use ODBC to Run SQL SELECT on Microsoft Excel Data

This article gives example SQL SELECT statements that you can use against Microsoft Excel versions 4.0 and 5.0 worksheets in Visual FoxPro by using ODBC.

You should already have created data sources to your Microsoft Excel files. For more information about how to do this, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: To execute an SQL SELECT against a Microsoft Excel version 5.0 workbook, you may need to execute the SQLTABLES() function to get the names of the worksheets that reside in the workbook. This will build a cursor that you can then browse to see the actual names of the worksheets to use. Here is an example use of the SQLTABLES function: The cursor created by this code has five fields, the third of which contains the table names. In the case of Microsoft Excel version 5.0, these table names are actually the names of the worksheets within the workbook to which you have connected. They all have a dollar sign ($) as the last character, and you must be sure to include the dollar sign when accessing the worksheet.

Here is an example of an SQL SELECT to a Microsoft Excel version 5.0 file:

Note that the sheet name is surrounded by double quotation marks, with the entire select statement inside single quotation marks. This is the required syntax.

Here is an example of an SQL SELECT to a Microsoft Excel version 4.0 file: Note the absence of double quotation marks surrounding the sheet name.