Jun 02 2022 08:37 AM - edited Jun 02 2022 09:32 AM
Hello, I can't believe I can't find this answer, which makes me think I'm asking the wrong question. How can I extract data from a database without copying the database into the current Workbook?
Explanation: I have a database of part which have all sorts of fields associated with them - for simplicity's sake, the two fields I'm interested in are the part number and the description. I want to create a bill-of-materials which accesses this database. When the user enters a part number, I want Excel to check the database, if the part number exists add the description in the next column, and if it doesn't exist provide a warning. This is all very easy to do if I copy the database to a new table - I simply access the required information from that table, set up data validation, and use xlookup to extract the associated description. However, I don't want to copy the entire database to the workbook, I only want to pull the information related to a given part number.
What I've tried: I've tried several work-arounds:
Thank you!
Jun 02 2022 06:41 PM
I don´t know if I understand the problem... I tried to do it with power query but I think I'm doing exactly the 3rd option haha
@rmahoney
Jun 08 2022 05:12 AM
Hi @alannavarro, thanks for the reply. Yes, that is the best result I've had as well (outside of using Access). There are a few shortcomings to this method, though, ordered least important to most important.
Ideally, this should all be done in one table, but I have not yet figured out how to do this using power query.