Caspio Bridge Plugin for MS Office

 

Available as an add-on feature, the Caspio Bridge Plugin for Microsoft Office automatically downloads your Caspio Bridge data to your local desktop and keeps it refreshed. You can use your office productivity suite to run local analysis on the data, mail merge, or integrate with other applications.

Installing the Plugin for Office 2007-2010

Prerequisites:

  • Requires 32-bit Microsoft Office 2007-2010 or 64-bit Microsoft Office 2010 (with Office SOAP Toolkit).
  • For security purposes, you must also create a Web Services API Profile in the Users tab of your Caspio Bridge account (see how). Note down your profile name and password, as they will be required to set up the plugin.

Installation instructions:

Retrieving Caspio Bridge Data

To transfer data from a Caspio Bridge Table or View into a Microsoft Access or Excel file, you must:

  1. Start the MS Access or MS Excel program.
  2. Create a new database or workbook or open an existing file.
  3. From the Caspio Bridge menu, select Get Data. If needed, enter your Caspio Bridge account ID, your Web Service profile name and profile password and click OK. (Note: your profile password may be different from your Caspio Bridge password.)
  4. In the Get Data dialog box, select the desired Table or View from the drop-down list. If you would like the plugin to automatically refresh the data in this table or worksheet, check Auto-refresh. Select the desired refresh interval.
  5. Click OK. Caspio Bridge Remote Sync Plugin will now create a new table or worksheet. It will be populated with the data from the selected Caspio Bridge Table or View. If a table or worksheet with the same name already exists in the current database or workbook, a new name will be generated automatically.

Refreshing Caspio Bridge Data

To manually refresh data in an existing table or worksheet:

  1. Start MS Access (MS Excel) and open the database (workbook) containing tables (worksheets) created by the plugin.
  2. From the Caspio Bridge menu, choose Refresh Data. If needed, enter your Caspio Bridge account ID, Web Services profile name and password and click OK.
  3. From the drop-down list, select the table (worksheet) you wish to refresh and click OK. The selected table (worksheet) is refreshed.

To change the refresh settings of an existing table or worksheet:

  1. Start MS Access (MS Excel) and open the database (workbook) containing tables (worksheets) created by the plugin.
  2. From the Caspio Bridge menu, choose Refresh Data. If needed, enter your Caspio Bridge account ID, Web Service profile name and password and click OK.
  3. From the drop-down list, select the table (worksheet) for which you wish to modify the refresh settings.
  4. Set your desired refresh settings and select another item from the drop-down list, or click OK. New settings will be applied automatically. If you have enabled the Auto-refresh option for any tables or worksheets, their data will be refreshed automatically based on the selected interval.
For Excel users. You can change the contents of any cells on the worksheet created by Caspio Bridge Plugin for MS Office. However, the plugin stores certain information in the comments to header cells. Do not alter these comments; otherwise the refresh may not work as expected.

Notes on Auto-refresh:

  • Caspio Bridge Plugin for MS Office performs Auto-refresh of tables (worksheets) only while MS Access (MS Excel) is running and you are logged in to Caspio Bridge. When you exit MS Access or MS Excel, Auto-refresh stops until MS Access or MS Excel is opened again.
  • The plugin stops the Auto-refresh of MS Access tables that are open in datasheet view.
  • To use Caspio Bridge data gathered by the plugin in the MS Access table in a third-party application, you must open your database (.mdb file) in shared mode. To enable shared mode, choose Options from the Tools menu, go to the Advanced tab and select Shared under the Default open mode. Your application may use the cbRefreshLast table property to determine the time of the last Auto-refresh.

Saving Your Password

To avoid the need to enter your password during sessions, check Remember password in the Caspio Bridge Web Services Login dialog box. After your credentials are saved, the plugin will no longer show the Caspio Bridge Web Services Login dialog during current session, unless the plugin is unable to connect to the Caspio Bridge server.

Caspio Bridge Plugin for MS Office uses Internet Explorer connection settings to connect to the Internet

Checking for updates

To check for updates to the Caspio Bridge Plugin for MS Office:

  1. Start MS Access (MS Excel) and open the database (workbook) containing tables (worksheets) created by the plugin,
  2. From the Caspio Bridge menu, choose Check for Updates.
  3. If you are using the latest version of the plugin, you will see the alert 'No updates available'. If you are using an older version, you will receive an alert asking you to download the new version. Click the Yes button. You will be taken to a Caspio website where you can download the new version of the plugin.