Quick and Easy Data Access with Excel Services

Today’s author, John Campbell, a Program Manager on the Excel Services team, shows us the quick and easy way to get external data access working with your Excel Services spreadsheets.

I have seen a lot of great blog posts that tell folks how to do great things with refreshed data in an Excel spreadsheet using Excel Services. I’ve seen posts about slicing dashboard pages, about using .odc files to manage data, and more. One thing that continues to be an issue is how to get connected to that data in the first place, in way that will work on Excel Services. The key is all about ‘telling the server’ what user identity to use when connecting to your data source. I know a number of people have gotten over this hump, but there are a lot of others who struggle here. In this posting I will shed some light on why the server works the way it does here, and show you the easiest way to get this up and running. I’m abbreviating in this post – so I’m not going to cover every last detail, option, and scenario here. If you want a lot more detail, and want to go deeper on why, and other options I don’t talk about here, then see the whitepaper I wrote on the topic: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262899.aspx.