Copy Table data from the Web - Easy!

[Uncle Gizmo]

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

youtube.com

 

[NauticalGent]

Have you tried this with Access yet?

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

Have you tried this with Access yet?

Yes.. There isn't an option in MS Access to get Data "From Web"

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

Need Colin @isladogs to have a look at it!

 

[NauticalGent]

Yes.. There isn't an option in MS Access to get Data "From Web"

True enough, I could have sworn there was.

 

[GPGeorge]

It depends on what you mean by "From the Web"

You can insert a web browser control in a form and display the data from many website pages that way. Not quite the same as extracting the contents of a table in a web page, to be sure, and not really what the question is about. But it is "data from the web" in Access.

 

[NauticalGent]

Good morning GPG, I was definely talking about extracting data from the web to a table directly. When Tony posted that link, I was hoping there was a way to do it as easily in Access. I was certain there wasnt, but it would not be the first time I was wrong...

 

[GPGeorge]

Good morning GPG, I was definely talking about extracting data from the web to a table directly. When Tony posted that link, I was hoping there was a way to do it as easily in Access. I was certain there wasnt, but it would not be the first time I was wrong...

I should have been more clear that I was being a bit facetious. You are quite right about the lack of a way to extract data directly.

However, there may be other ways to do it that are more practical.

Some sites offer APIs to work with data they make publicly available.

 

[GPGeorge]

I wanted to follow up with an example of what I suggested. That YouTube link is pulling data from a Wikipedia page, so I went and found an API that is supposed to work with Wikipedia. To use it in VBA, of course, would require some advanced coding, but it should be doable.

 

[isladogs]

Need Colin @isladogs to have a look at it!

The video in post #1 shows one of the main reasons why Access needs its own version of Excel's Power Query AKA Get & Transform
Unfortunately it can't be done that easily in Access.... so it is probably easiest to import to Excel then link or import that data to Access.

However you can still get a lot of data directly into Access from the web by various means.
There are numerous examples. Here are a few of mine:

1. Web scraping
Here are 2 examples -
a) grabbing the latest version number from a web page and updating if it is newer:

Web Version Checker

This example app is designed to show how users can be alerted to program updates on a specified web page.

www.isladogs.co.uk

b) downloading a list of all addresses for a selected postcode together with the latest house prices

UK Postcode Address Lookup

This free app is used to get a list of addresses & house price info for selected UK postcodes together with the geo-coordinates and a static Google map for that postcode

www.isladogs.co.uk

2. Downloading data to a local table using APIs with the data usually in JSON/XML/CSV format.
For example, the latest currency exchange rates

Currency Exchange Rate Tracker

This free Access app gets the latest currency exchange rates from an online data source in JSON format

www.isladogs.co.uk

 

[isladogs]

I wanted to follow up with an example of what I suggested. That YouTube link is pulling data from a Wikipedia page, so I went and found an API that is supposed to work with Wikipedia. To use it in VBA, of course, would require some advanced coding, but it should be doable.

Just tried to sign up & download this API but having problems. Has anyone done so successfully?

 

[GPGeorge]

Just tried to sign up & download this API but having problems. Has anyone done so successfully?

I should have tried it before posting. It's really just an example of the possibility of using this approach.

 

[isladogs]

Well I'm on the mailing list but I still can't work out how to get hold of /use the API. Probably just me being dense....

 

[Pat Hartman]

When MS added this feature to Excel, it should have been AUTOMATIC to also add it to Access but they just don't think of Access as a lifeform