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Last week we added a new feature in Zoho Sheet which helps you to sync up with data available in the form of HTML tables in public web pages. We had this syncing up with public CSV files earlier, and now we have added support for tables of data in web pages. So if you want to have your spreadsheet filled in with data automatically updated from a particular web page and do some analysis on it, then this would be quite useful. If you have used Web Query in Excel, then you will be able to relate to this feature.

Here is a sample spreadsheet which makes use of web query:

In the above spreadsheet, the exchange rates are fetched daily from http://x-rates.com. Based on the exchange rate, the total sales in USD is calculated (refer cell F21).

And here is how you can configure your spreadsheet to make use of this feature. Use the 'Link External Data' feature available under the 'More Actions' menu.

How are you using this feature? Share your story on our discussion forums.

Apart from this, we have improved the page loading speed (especially when you login). More performance improvements are coming.

Comments

sociosole

15-Mar-2009 12:51 PM

This is great. I do have a few questions though...

1) Is there a limit to the number of exernal data links you can have in a sheet? Google sheets limits web queries to 50, EditGrid limits it to 1000 fetches. I have an application in mind that requires more than 1000 fetches (that's why I ended up looking here!)

2) There's a way to only get the colums that we're interrested in (select data step), is it possible to also select only specific row(s)? Based on a value? In the application I'm trying to build, I fetch a webpage that list the price and quatity for an item for 50 store location, but I'm only interrested in one of those location (the table is http://69.16.196.55/clienthtml/vendor_0171.htm and the only relevant data is the row containing the address "Admirals Arms Alley West Centre # 0" or the vendo ID "5370BA1". This webpage is one of the 600 or so items I need to track. The "parent" page is http://69.16.196.55/clienthtml/items.htm and does contain the name and html link to all the item pages).

Thanks

Vaseekaran

16-Mar-2009 06:19 AM

Hi,

As of now we don't have any limit with number of external links per sheet.
But we think having 1000 link in a sheet will lead sheet loading issues as our client is optimized for few thousand rows only. So you can have the links configured across sheets of a work book. Also please do have the links configured one below the other because if you have links configured side by side and if no of rows gets increased in one link it will affect the data from other link configured side by side.

Regarding fetching only few rows on some criteria, we don't have that option.

regards,
Vaseekaran

Sync up your spreadsheet with remote web pages

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