Forum Discussion
How to automatically login and refresh a spreadsheet using a plug-in?
Hi.
I have a requirement to automatically refresh a spreadsheet's data. I'm an Excel novice and have no idea how to do this automatically. To refresh the data in a manual fashion, I perform the following steps:
1) Open the Excel file.
2) Click on the iLEVEL menu option (it's on the top amongst other menu options such as 'Data', 'Review', Automate', etc..). This will present an iLEVEL login icon. Click on this icon and then enter my email address and password. In fact, once I've entered my work email, it uses SSO to gain access instead of entering a password. I do have a password should I need it (needs to be entered somewhere).
3) On the toolbar ribbon, under the iLEVEL menu option, there is the 'Refresh All' option. I click on this, wait a few minutes, and the spreadsheet has its data refreshed.
iLEVEL is a third-party software solution.
What I need to do is to achieve the above result automatically. At, say, 3am each morning, I would like automatically refresh the data. So there is the need to not only automatically login and refresh the data, but also to schedule the data refresh. The updated spreadsheet will then act as the data source for our reporting. In case it's asked, at this time, we cannot look to hook into the view/table that feeds this spreadsheet. Therefore, the spreadsheet is the endpoint.
I will investigate this but if you are aware if this can be done or not, and point me in the right direction, it will be appreciated. I'm wondering if Power Query, or something similar, could achieve this.
Thanks.
2 Replies
How about Power Automate:
- Use Power Automate to open the workbook and run an Office Script that calls workbook.refreshAllDataConnections().
- This works well for Power Query or native Excel connections, but may not trigger third-party plug-in refreshes like iLEVEL unless they expose a callable method.
- EraurVaneIron Contributor
Refresh when Power Query is set (Data→Get Data→Data Source Setting check box), or install RefreshAll plug-in.