The AS/400 & Microsoft Office Integration Handbook

This book takes a detailed look at how you can integrate applications in the Microsoft Office 97 product suite with data from your AS/400. Tasks that used to be nearly impossible are now made easy, if you learn the integration secrets in this book--secrets such as how to use your AS/400's output with your PC data formatting tools; secrets such as how to easily make professional-looking reports with AS/400 data. You'll also learn the secret of using visual query tools to create sophisticated information output; how to analyze and summarize the detailed and often cumbersome reports from your AS/400; and how to combine the presentation capabilities of Microsoft Office with the database capabilities of the AS/400 to provide your company with the best of both worlds. The first sections of the book introduce the essential knowledge you need to use Client Access as you integrate AS/400 data with the Microsoft Office applications. Author Brian Singleton explains how to install and configure Client Access, how to provide a seamless method of AS/400 integration with Microsoft Office using ODBC, the network drive functionality of Client Access, and the Client Access Data Transfer function. He also describes TCP/IP's FTP file transfer function and how to use it to bring data from the AS/400 to your PC. The remaining sections cover the veritable Swiss Army knife functions of Microsoft Office. For each of the office applications, there's a specific chapter devoted to showing how each function can be used with the AS/400--from using Word to create mailing labels, form letters, and envelopes to downloading data into spreadsheets, producing sophisticated queries and data retrievals, and creatingsophisticated reports, using Outlook as your AS/400. If you have PCs attached to your AS/400, this handbook has the essential information that will show you how to harness the power of Microsoft Office and exploit the AS/400 database. Key concepts covered in this book include the following: The different omponents of Client Access including ODBC, data transfer, network drives, operation navigator, and terminal emulation, how to install and configure Client Access for Microsoft Office integration, security issues with ODBC, how to configure+I6 a Client Access ODBC DSN Under Windows 95/NT, how to install and use MSQUERY, how the Query Wizard works and how it can make creating a Query easier, how to sort, filter, join, summarize and total using MSQUERY, how to merge AS/400 data to create labels, letters, and envelopes, how to create lists, reports, and graphs using Microsoft Excel and AS/400 data, yhe advantage of using Client Access Excel add-in, why Microsoft Access is one of the most powerful database products available on the PC, how to rename a linked table within the Access database without affecting the table on the AS/400, step-by-step instructions for importing data through Access, how to sort, filter, join, summarize and total using Access, techniques to help speed up your database operations with Access, seven steps needed to set up Outlook as an email client on an AS/400 server, how to set up Network Neighborhood to access your AS/400 and make sure your AS/400 files are secure, techniques to use data transfer to transfer data between PCs and the AS/400, how to automate the process, how to unlock the secrets of CCSIDs so that the AS/400 data is properly decoded, the advantagesand disadvantages of using FTP with TCP/IP rather CA/400 download, and the 11 FTP commands and how they are used.