PostgreSQL Query to Excel Sheet

Question

I need to export some data from PostgreSQL to Excel (quick customer wish), and the last time Excel had serious problems opening or importing my COPYd csv files (line endings, utf-8 encoding, etc), and it took me an hour at best.

Does someone know a quick, elegant solution that generates a real Excel file? Like a small shell script or the like?

I want this to be done either on my Linux box (Debian 5.0 Lenny) or on Windows (XP or higher).

Answer 1

You could install the PostgreSQL ODBC driver on the Windows machine, and then connect Excel to the database like explained in this blog post (except using ODBC rather than OLEDB).

I haven't tested this. I'm not really sure if this makes it any easier than exporting CSV and fixing it (given what Excel is like).

EDIT (thanks @Tometzky): The best solution is to use the PostgreSQL ODBC driver to connect Microsoft Access to the database and from Access export to Excel.