Two common tasks seem to be integrating RE with an Excel file. This can mean two things. Either from a plugin or some RE:VBA code opening a Excel file and extracting the data or it can mean that from within Excel VBA access the RE objects to retrieve some data. The way you handle the two scenarios is quite different.

If you are trying to connect to Raiser’s Edge from Excel you will need the API module. You connect to RE using the REAPI object and initialize it with a serial number and optionally user name and password. You then use the API in exactly the same way as you would from within RE, i.e. via VBA or any other API application.

If you want to open up Excel from RE then you will need to create the application objects. This is shown in the example below:

    Dim objExcel As Excel.Application     ' Excel application 
    Dim objBook As Excel.Workbook      ' Excel workbook  
    Dim objSheet As Excel.Worksheet     ' Excel Worksheet  
    Dim oConstit As New CRecord    oConstit.Init REApplication.SessionContext 
    Set objExcel = CreateObject("excel.application") 'Starts the Excel Session  
    Set objBook = objExcel.Workbooks.Open("C:test.xls")   

    For Each objSheet In objBook.Sheets 
        If UCase(objSheet.Name) = "Sheet1" Then 
            oConstit.Load CLng(objSheet.Range("A2").Text) 
            objSheet.Range("A3").Text = oConstit.Fields(RECORDS_fld_FULL_NAME) 
            Exit For 
        End If 
    Next objSheet 
     objBook.Save  
     If Not objBook Is Nothing Then 
        objBook.Close 
        Set objBook = Nothing 
    End If 
     If Not objExcel Is Nothing Then  
        objExcel.Quit 
        Set objExcel = Nothing 
    End If  

This is quite self-explanatory code, although Excel has an object model just as RE does which is very large and takes a while to get to understand. There is plenty of Excel API information on MSDN.