Microsoft Excel is a very XML aware application, featuring not only XML, but also XPath and XSLT capabilities; and this intermediate/advanced Excel course explains all of Excel’s XML-related features in depth. The course assumes a good familiarity with Microsoft Excel and the use of Excel formulas. However, no knowledge of XML, or its related technologies, is assumed.
The course begins with an overview of the nature of XML and itemizes the different objects which can form part of an XML document. This introductory section also explains the use of DTDs and schema documents to validate XML.
We then move on to look at the importing and exporting of data into and out of Microsoft Excel. We discuss the creation of XML maps and how they relate to XML tables, as well as the validation of XML data, using schema documents, both on import and export.
Next, we explore online XML, as we use Excel’s WEBSERVICE, FILTERXML and ENCODEURL functions to download XML data from online web services and use XPath statements to extract the information we want from the downloaded XML.
Although FILTERXML and its XPath statements are designed to work only with online web services, this course will show you a crafty workaround which will enable you to use this function to extract data from your local XML documents as well.
The final section of this course is given over to an XML capability which is well hidden in Microsoft Excel, namely the ability to transform XML as you import it by using XSL stylesheets. The course provides an overview of how XSL sheets are constructed and how XPath is used within stylesheets to target the different parts of the input XML document which you want to transform and include in the output.
In short, whatever Excel XML workflows you are faced with, this course will equip you to deal with them confidently and efficiently.
