Amazon Function for Excel and MS Access
This Excel spreadsheet and MS Access database contain two macros. The first one converts International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs) which follow the 13 character standard (ISBN 31) to ISBN 10s. The second function looks up various fields such as title and author in Amazon's database and returns the relevant value. This spreadsheet is designed to help people create a list of their personal books or to help a librarian of a small collection.
The Excel file is useful to test this function out, but becomes too slow to use after about 10 books unless calcultions are turned off. The MS Access database is useful if you have a few thousand books. There is also a Canadian and US version of both files which will give you either the Canadian or US price for the books.
The Excel workbook looks like this:
The MS Access database looks like this:
System Requirements
I developed and tested this on Excel 2003 on a PC. I also tested it on a Mac, but it didn't work because I couldn't find an XML parser for the Mac version of Excel. If anyone can figure out how to make it work on a Mac, please email me.
Download
If you have Office 2000, first download and install the latest XML parser from Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/results.aspx?pocId=&freetext=MSXML&DisplayLang=en
Excel Version:
AmazonFunction-Canada-v1.xls
AmazonFunction-US-v1.xls
MS Access Version:
AmazonFunction-Canada-v1.mdb
AmazonFunction-US-v1.mdb
GuideToTheAmazonFunctionForMSAccess-v1.pdf
Credits
The ISBN13to10 code was adapted from:
http://weblogs.asp.net/fmarguerie/archive/2007/12/23/isbn-13-to-isbn-10.aspx
The Amazon Function was adapted from:
http://www.s-anand.net/Web_lookup_using_Excel.html
If you have any questions, please email me at andrew.morgan@utoronto.ca. It may take me a few days to respond, as work is always busy.