Salesforce is a multifunctional and highly customizable CRM platform, which is used by millions of users to manage complex business processes and boost the productivity of sales, customer service, marketing teams, etc.
Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program, which is so familiar and comfortable for many users worldwide, and there are situations when it is much better and easier to work with data in the Excel worksheets rather than in the native UI of a cloud app.
However, it's not a trivial challenge to export huge data pieces from Salesforce to the Excel worksheets as you need built-in features or external tools, which allow exporting data to the Excel format.
We briefly describe 5 ways how to connect Salesforce to Excel, easily export data from Salesforce to Excel worksheets, pros and cons of these ways and typical use cases applied.
1. Salesforce Data Loaders
To export data using data loaders is the first and most standard way. Using these tools, you can export data from Salesforce to Excel as CSV files, make changes to these files in Excel and import changed CSV files back to Salesforce. You can find many of such data loaders on the Internet, and many of them have free versions. You can also try native Salesforce built-in data loader (first-party tool), which you can use after installing it on your PC. However, third-party data loaders such as, for example Skyvia Salesforce data loader, can be more robust than Salesforce’s native offerings. For example, you don’t need to download Skyvia on your computer or laptop as it is a cloud-based solution. You need only a web browser to access it and set minimal configuration to safely export and import data as CSV files.
2. Excel Original Interface
To get data from Salesforce to Excel through Excel original interface is a perfect solution for users of Microsoft Office Professional Edition. Unlike data loaders, in this case the data are displayed directly in the Excel UI, you do not need to use intermediate CSV files.
3. Excel Add-Ins
The third way to pull Salesforce data into Excel is to use Excel Add-Ins for Salesforce. Add-ins help you to connect Microsoft Excel to Salesforce, load data from Salesforce to Excel, instantly refresh data in an Excel workbook from Salesforce, edit these data, and update Salesforce from Excel. It enables you to work with Salesforce contacts, accounts, opportunities, leads, users, attachments, tasks, and other objects like with usual Excel worksheets, as well as to perform data cleansing and de-duplication, and apply all the Excel's powerful data processing and analysis capabilities to these data.
4. ODBC Drivers
Another way of performing Salesforce export to Excel is by using ODBС drivers. With ODBC drivers, the same as with add-ins, you export data directly into an Excel spreadsheet. However, note that unlike add-ins, ODBC drivers do not allow loading data modified in Excel back to the source.
5. OData Endpoints
OData (Open Data Protocol) is an OASIS standard that defines the best practice for building and consuming queryable and interoperable RESTful APIs in a simple and standard way.
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