topic Trying to connect to excel spreadsheet in Discussions

Trying to connect to excel spreadsheet

AutoMongoose469 — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 17:47:04 GMT

I am using JMP® Student Edition 18.2.0. I am trying to set up a live connection to an excel spreadsheet. I read the following article: https://www.jmp.com/support/help/en/19.0/index.shtml#page/jmp/connect-to-a-database-using-data-connectors.shtml

It says that I should have several data connectors pre-loaded into JMP, but I am not seeing anything pre-loaded. Do I need to manually install some driver or is there anything else I am missing here?

Thank you!

Re: Trying to connect to excel spreadsheet

txnelson — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 18:39:27 GMT

The webpage you are referencing is for JMP 19. The data connectors shown were not downloaded with JMP 18, which is the version you have indicated you are using.

I am not personally aware of a link to where the connectors can be downloaded for JMP 18. Maybe other Community members may have an answer.

Re: Trying to connect to excel spreadsheet

briancorcoran — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 20:36:41 GMT

The reference to the Excel data connector is a "possible" connector that you may find. This will only happen if you happen to have an ODBC driver to Excel on your machine. JMP scans existing ODBC drivers when it starts up, and creates connector templates for those drivers. Even then, you would need to create a connector based on com.jmp.excel, it won't come pre-configured. I think we (JMP) needs to do a better job explaining the ODBC-based default data connectors that it may supply in the documentation.

All of that to say that you don't really want to use the ODBC-based Excel driver anyway. It is not going to provide a live link to an Excel sheet, and it will have lower performance and reduced options from using the File->Open and the Excel Wizard on the file.

If your ultimate goal is having a hot link to an Excel sheet, the closest you will likely find is to use the JMP add-in to Excel. It will at least allow easy update to JMP, but it will not provide an instantaneous updating of JMP data based on changes to the Excel sheet. This capability does not exist in JMP. It can be simulated with JSL (scripting) that refreshes the open of the Excel file, but that is a crude approximation.

I hope this helps,

Brian Corcoran

JMP Development