Microsoft® Office Excel 2003 Inside Out

Using a Web Query to Return Internet Data

Web queries let you grab specific information, such as stock prices, sports scores, or your company's current sales data, from the Internet or an intranet. Queries can be set up either to prompt you for the data you want (for stock ticker symbols, for example) or to get the same information every time they're executed. You can try out Web queries using a set of sample queries that come with Excel 2003.

Excel's graphical interface for creating Web queries lets you build a query by pointing to the data you want. You can refresh the query at any time or at regular intervals, and you can save the query in an IQY file for reuse in other worksheets. You do not need to understand how the target Web page is built ...