In the Nav Forum community.dynamics.com one member asked for usage of ODBC in Nav 2013, because it was used in the older version 3.6 for exporting data to Excel. So i researched a little bit and wrote some test code. Here is the result.

Odbc can be used in Nav 2013 (or higher) with the according .net classes.
Following sample code inserts 2 text values into an excel sheet.

– preparation of excel file
create a new excel file, for that sample with format excel 97-2003 xls.
save it into folder c:\temp, call it book1.xls.
the first sheet must have the name ‘Sheet1’.
write FName into cell A1, LName into cell B1.
save the excel file, close excel.

the prepared excel sheet:

– variables: set property runonclient of dotnet variables to yes
OdbcConnection : DotNet : System.Data.Odbc.OdbcConnection.‘System.Data, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089’
Command : DotNet : System.Data.Odbc.OdbcCommand.‘System.Data, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089’
Query : Text
CmdResult : Integer

– the sample code:
OdbcConnection := OdbcConnection.OdbcConnection;
OdbcConnection.ConnectionString := ‘Driver={Microsoft Excel Driver (*.xls)};DBQ=c:\temp\book1.xls;ReadOnly=0’;
OdbcConnection.Open;
MESSAGE(FORMAT(OdbcConnection.State.ToString));

Query := ‘insert into [Sheet1$] (Fname,Lname) values (?,?)’;
Command := Command.OdbcCommand(Query, OdbcConnection);
Command.Parameters.AddWithValue(‘?’, ‘value 1’);
Command.Parameters.AddWithValue(‘?’, ‘value 2’);
CmdResult := Command.ExecuteNonQuery;
MESSAGE(‘Odbc Command Result: ‘ + FORMAT(CmdResult));

OdbcConnection.Close;
MESSAGE(FORMAT(OdbcConnection.State.ToString));
CLEAR(OdbcConnection);

result:

It seems that using Odbc is an interesting alternative to table Excel Buffer.

cheers