Importing data - and maintaining sheet formatting

[Cjaye]

I have a spreadsheet I created in Excel 2003 with several columns, formulas, formatting, filtering, etc. where the data is refreshed when the file is opened. The data comes from a table created in Oracle from many queries, updates, text file imports, etc. I use an odbc connection. The fields in the Oracle table match exactly the fields in the spreadsheet (some fields are blank in the oracle table and are populated in the spreadsheet with formulas). Everything works great until I have to modify the oracle table, for instance, to add another field....and so then, another column in the spreadsheet needs to be added (in the same position as the field in the table). The only way around this I've found, is to create another .odc...which means redoing a lot of work including all the formatting, etc in the spreadsheet. The new columns I had to add I inserted into the spreadsheet and are in cols F-I. Is there anyway to do this maintaining all my column headings, formatting, etc. where when the spreadsheet is opened the data is refreshed including the new fields into their perspective columns? It kind of sounds like I need a template (although in all my researching this I didn't see where that would be the solution). I have tried many of the suggestions trying to edit the query, etc. but when the data is freshed, my headers, formatting, etc is replaced. We have upgraded to office 2007 but from what I can tell, it doesn't matter..as far as a solution to my problem. I hope there's a simply over-looked fix for this, as I really don't want to have to totally rethink this spreadsheet into for example, a pivot table, template, etc. Thank you in advance for any guidance you can give.