Connecting to MS Excel

Selecting a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet uses the same dialog box as Access, but it is easier to use. With Excel, all you have to do is set the Database Type property to be the version of Excel you are using and set the filename in the Database Name property.

The difference between Access and Excel is that Access is a database that stores information in tables and Excel stores data in spreadsheets. After selecting the correct spreadsheet file and clicking the Finish button, Crystal Reports displays the worksheet names instead of table names. You have to choose which worksheets to pull data from and move them to the Selected Tables list.

When you create a new Excel spreadsheet file, there are actually three worksheets created by default. Most likely, you will use the first spreadsheet and leave the other two unused. When Crystal Reports opens the Excel file, it will see each worksheet and list each one as its own table. Even though the other two worksheets don’t have any data on them, they are still listed. Just ignore them and use the first worksheet as your table.

Crystal Reports interprets each column in a spreadsheet as a database field. Crystal Reports looks at the column headings to determine the field names.