Creating a table in excel

Question

Hey guys, I was working on project for my company. The requirements are to create an excel report at the end.

The way I am currently coding/thinking.

Remote Server ---> Local Access table --> give user a UI to filter data however they want --> Export to excel.

However, one of my analysts asked me if we can stay away from access and use Excel only. So I was wondering, is there a way to create a "table" like access table in Excel? This way, when I import data from remote server, I can put it in a table (IN EXCEL), create a form for UI, and have everything contained in one file. I can't paste the raw data into a sheet because of performance issues (however, I have not tried it. I just assume that it is a lot faster to query a 'real' table then to search through excel cells).

Can you guys think of a alternate solution?

Answer 1

One option is to use Microsoft Query to directly access the remote database. In this case, the users would need to use the UI of MS Query (which isn't the prettiest) for filtering, but it would get the job done without needing the intermediate database.

Here is a good reference from the Microsoft site.