Our company keeps order attachments in an old Image column in SQL Server. We use Excel with VBA ADODB recordsets to manage orders. I’m curious if we can show the actual files instead of just binary data. Even a clickable link to open them would be great.
Here’s what our data looks like:
SELECT OrderNum, AttachmentData, FileExtension
FROM OrderInfo
| OrderNum |
AttachmentData |
FileExtension |
| 101 |
0x255044462… |
.png |
| 102 |
0x89504E470… |
.pdf |
| 103 |
0xFFD8FFE00… |
.jpg |
Any ideas on how to make this work in Excel? Thanks for your help!
From experience, a practical solution is to export the binary data to temporary files using a VBA function. This avoids embedding the raw binary within Excel and keeps the workbook lightweight. Once the files are created, you can insert hyperlinks that open these files. This approach efficiently bridges the database and Excel by leveraging external file storage, and it has proven effective in similar environments with large volumes of binary attachments. The method provides both performance benefits and convenient access to the file content.
hey there, have u tried using power query? it can pull data from sql server and has some cool features for handling binary stuff. might be worth a shot to see if it can convert those image columns into clickable links or thumbnails. just an idea, good luck with ur project!