Manage the Web Site with Excel
Internet Explorer (IE) and other MS Office programmes (Outlook, Word) can be used interactively and controlled with Excel by using VBA codes. For example, this feature enables us to send e-mail automatically by Excel via Outlook or Gmail or to automatically use a site that can be opened with Internet Explorer.
We can use a web site interactively with a VBA script to be written in Excel. We can open a web site of our choosing by entering its URL address, enter the data we want in the textbox or combobox in the site and direct the web site automatically by pressing the buttons. We can extract the contents seen on the pages opening on the site from html codes and bring them to the templates we determine in Excel.
With such automation, we can extract the exchange rate from the Central Bank instantaneously and on date basis, enter the data in Excel in a web application where data is entered continuously or extract the product prices on an e-trade site.
Remote Access to Web Database
Sites that broadcast on the web communicate via the database established on their servers in the background. All web site content is saved in this database. Necessary information is drawn depending on the page opened and is displayed on the browser. Communication can be established with Excel not just with the front page of the Web site, but also with the web database.
Excel may use different databases. It can pull data from databases such as MS SQL Server, MS Access, Oracle, MYSQL using SQL codes, and after processing this data it can bring them to the reports in Excel pages. For example, we can reach a website that uses MySQL database from our own computer, and we can move the information in the site to an Excel page with one button. Moreover, we can record the entries we make to Excel to the database of the web site.
Especially in cases where great amount of data has to be entered and updated (for example on shopping sites where products are entered), we can save the data in the database of our site after editing it as we wish in Excel.
