It's not great, but there's an existing SQL IDE called Microsoft Query. You can find it in the Data > Get External Data > From Other Sources area of the ribbon.

It's not great, but there's an existing SQL IDE called Microsoft Query. You can find it in the Data > Get External Data > From Other Sources area of the ribbon. It's straight out of the Win3x era graphics-wise but it lets you do drag-and-drop style query structures. It does fall apart horrendously once you get to anything approaching complex datasets with many tables, joins, etc. but the precident is there for a graphical IDE baked into Excel. I used ODBC connections to pull in data for further manipulation in Excel to run a ~$200m project for a couple of years. It saved a great deal of time compared to the manual system that was in place prior whilst presenting the data in the familiar excel system which didn't scare away the old baby boomer who was doing all the manual work beforehand. Once I set up the queries and showed him how to refresh the data from the ribbon, he was able to do it without breaking it and whilst still feeling at home enough to get the job done on his own initative. edit: I note that the above all falls apart somewhat when you need R/W access to your DB. I've only ever done SELECTs because I want to know info from a DB, crunch numbers, then feed decisions into another system. I don't know if you can UPDATE, INSERT, etc. via Excel/MS Query as I've simply never tried it.