Have subsequently come to the conclusion that AOI is useful for ad-hoc
reporting but is of little use if, like me, you are trying to create a
seamless excel application that is user friendly. I have now gone
down the route of grabbing data via ODBC.

Access-Accounts seem to have gone to great lengths to allow
connectivity with Excel but have fallen at the final hurdle by failing
to supply a reference library with useful VBA commands for controlling
their software. I also found out during my investigations that the
Access Functions (ie excel formulae) for linking back to your database
are dreadfully slow if you have more than a few hundred (easily done).

Therefore ODBC is by far the quickest and most flexible option.

Please do get in touch if you are a business also struggling with this
dilemma when developing your reporting, forecasting & consolidation
models.

Kind regards

Stuart Bisset BA CA