Web Query imput/return data problem

[kfornas]

Hi-
I'm having problems using web queries to analyize a list of data in regards
to performance horse sales for the year 2005. In the sales that I'm looking
at, there are about 2000 horses and I need to find out how much each one
earned. I have an excel sheet that I have all of the horses names in one
column but I've been having difficulties with getting the internet to return
the values that I need.

Here is how to do it manually
Look up the horse's name in the column
go to http://www.nchacutting.com/cgi-bin/horseinfo.pl?2
enter the horse's name in the dialog box and click
resulting page URL is http://www.nchacutting.com/cgi-bin/horseinfo.pl?3 and
has horse earnings data

Is there any way to use a web query for this? I couldn't get the web query
wizard to get what I needed so then I tried playing around with .iqy files
but I wasn't sure what to put after:
WEB
1
http://www.nchacutting.com/cgi-bin/horseinfo.pl?2

or if that's even what I should be using. I'm assuming that if I could get
the web query to work, I'd probably have to use some if statements to filter
out the earnings data that I want into a seperate colums.

Here are a couple of horse names that are in the system if you'd like to
play around with it:
High Brow Cat
Smart Little Rondee
Mecom Blue
Royal Boonsmal
Peptoboonsmal
Royal Fletch
Smart Little Lena

At first glance, this looks relatively easy but has proved to be exceedingly
difficult. Any help would be much appreciated! -Katy

 

[Tim Williams]

I don't think you can use the web query wizard to set this up.

You could look into automating Internet Explorer to do this: check Google
groups for "Excel automate IE"

Tim

 

[kfornas]

Thanks for your response. I read some stuff about writing a text file (.iqy)
and importing data using the file but I'm not sure how it works. Do you know
anything about setting that up for my problem?

 

[Tim Williams]

Sorry - never used that approach.

Tim

 

[mjack003]

Have a thread where I solved my own problem with automating IE if you
want to check it out. Just search for my username. Takes a bit longer
but has worked like a charm. All it requires is reading through the
HTML and finding your form values then plugging in the correct values
then running your web query.

Mjack003

 

[kfornas]

Hi-
Thanks for trying to help. I tried copying your code and modifying it but
I kept getting error messages. I really wish that I could get it to work. I
think that the problem is in the website that I'm getting info from-
http://www.nchacutting.com/cgi-bin/horseinfo.pl?2 Any other ideas?
-kfornas