Connecting to databases and installing ODBC drivers

You’ll notice that this book doesn’t have anywhere near 1,000 pages, which means there’s simply not enough space to dive very deep into the topic of connecting to databases and installing ODBC drivers. With that said, the examples in this chapter were chosen to give you exposure to using Power Query with a variety of data sources. As you’ll see, connecting to a database typically only involves a couple of steps, depending on the platform that you’re connecting to.

Establishing an Access database and SQL Server connections

Let’s start by linking to an Access database in Excel for Windows (you cannot connect to Access databases in Excel for macOS):

1. Press Ctrl + N to create a blank workbook (or choose File | New and choose Blank Workbook).
2. Choose Data | Get Data | From Database | From Microsoft Access Database, select the Chapter 12 – Fruit Sales.accdb database from...