I read in the
Office.com blog (see post link below) that you can use Webservice functions to automatically update Excel spreadsheets. I didn't know you could do this.
Google had introduced this incredibly powerful and useful feature to their Google Docs spreadsheets a couple of years ago, and I immediately started using it, until Google inexplicably withdrew it - so it is really nice to see it back and this time as an established and
trusted function in Excel - which product I use a lot. (I had already ceased to make any new Google Docs spreadsheets about a year ago, and am migrating existing spreadsheets to Microsft's SkyDrive.)
Use Webservice functions to automatically update Excel spreadsheets with online data
This post on exploring Webservice functions is brought to you by Lee Bizek, a Program Manager in the Excel Team.
Have you ever wanted to incorporate data from online resources into your Excel spreadsheets, such as stock quotes, weather, Bing Search results or even Twitter feeds? With new Webservice functions, now you can.
I used anonymous editing in Web Excel to collaborate with a group to coordinate a 20-person camping trip that required some people to sleep outdoors in tents. Being aware of online weather updates helped us to prepare for the elements and also predict high and low tides because we wanted to go crabbing as part of the adventure.
With Excel 2013 for the desktop, we pulled the latest weather and tide information from the internet into Excel using the =WEBSERVICE(url) function--and the best part is the information updates automatically!
To learn how to use the Webservice function, we'll do 2 things:
Use a =WEBSERVICE(url) function to get the data
Use the =FILTERXML(xml, xpath) function to extract a single piece of data from the XML string
(Read the rest at the link above.)
