Easy MTConnect and Microsoft Excel

Below are the very easy steps to get MTConnect data into Excel are as follows:

• Go into the Data selection on the upper tab
• Select From Web
• New Web Query will come up
• In the browser bar that pops up, put in your MTConnect http url  (for example):
• http://agent.mtconnect.org/sample?count=1000
• Hit Import
• You will then hit Import again after the data is loaded into the window.
  
• Select Yes to add to the question, Do You Want To Continue To Add This Schema To Your Notebook
• When the pop up window comes up for Import Data, select Existing Worksheet which is the bottom selection when you are prompoted on where to put your data
• At this point Excel will put in the proper headers and values in the correct locations
• Of course, you will likely want to use a more specific Sample Request in step #4, but I kept it simple to just to make the point how EASY it is for applications to get data from an MTConnect enabled device.
• Below is a four minute screencast on exactly how to do this.  Notice that I did absolutely nothing in terms of laying out the titles of the columns, where the columns and rows should go, where the data should appear.  The reason why is that since this is XML, Excel (just like a lot of software that reads XML data) knows how to deal with the data and display it properly.  Note that the video starts off with a gray screen for the first few seconds and then straightens out.