Connecting Excel to SQLite

By Gissimee Doe

Find patterns in your data with Microsoft Excel.
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You can load external data into Microsoft Excel or export spreadsheet data from Excel into SQLite using an Open Database Connectivity driver. SQLite is a open-source SQL server. It's designed for small databases, so it's useful for businesses with low data volumes and limited budgets that want to use a relational database management system. You’ll need to create a SQLite database and an ODBC connection to the database in question, and then use an Excel query to retrieve data using the ODBC connection.

ODBC

Download the SQLite ODBC driver installation file from the Christian Werner site (link in Resources). The name of the file is “sqliteodbc.exe.”

Double-click on the downloaded file to install the SQLite ODBC driver.

Download the SQLite browser from SourceForge (link in Resources), and then install it. You'll use this application to create a new SQLite database and tables as necessary.

Click “Start” on your Windows desktop and select “Control Panel.” Click “Administrative Tools” and choose “Data Sources (ODBC)” from the list.

Click “Add” under the “User DSN” tab and follow the steps in the wizard to add the SQLite ODBC driver and set the database you created as your data source.

Excel

Launch the Microsoft Office Excel application.

Click on the “Data” tab in Excel’s top menu bar.

Click “From Other Sources” under the Get External Data heading.

Click on “From Data Connection Wizard” and choose “ODBC DSN” from the list of options. Follow the steps in the wizard to connect to the SQLite DSN you created in the previous section and pull data from your SQLite database into Excel.

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