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I'm working on expanding my company's Instagram account and wanted to make an excel spreadsheet with various analytics for each post. I wanted to know if there was a way to have a cell with the amount of likes a picture has on Instagram and have it auto-update after a set interval of time (maybe ever 12 hours or so). I really don't know anything about coding but a friend referred me here so hopefully this question isn't too stupid! Thanks!

Liam
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  • SO is not a free code writing service. If you need code, but do not know anything about coding and are not making any attempt to learn, then there are many software services companies available in the market. You might try on the Super User site. – lit Apr 12 '17 at 17:08
  • I was primarily asking if this is possible and if so... how? I'm willing to learn, but I wanted to make it clear that I'm not very good at coding. Not looking for free handouts, just some guidance. – Liam Apr 12 '17 at 17:11
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    Do they have an API? How do you expect to get the data from Instagram in the first place? Do you have the data already and are asking how to import it into Excel? I think this is off topic for SO, but perhaps try [SuperUser](https://superuser.com/) instead? SO is for helping with code you already have. – BruceWayne Apr 12 '17 at 17:12
  • Well I know in Excel you can import a table from the web simply by using the URL to the table. I was wondering if there was a similar way to just grab the "Like #"? It's public data and doesn't require anything to access. – Liam Apr 12 '17 at 17:14
  • Most things are possible with enough effort. Please follow BruceWayne's suggestion to look for and API. One could screen scrape the HTML using Python or PowerShell, but that would be lots of effort. It might be possible with Excel if it can use VB.net. – lit Apr 12 '17 at 17:17
  • The short answer is, yes, you could totally do it. I would probably scrape the site using an IE object or XMLHTTP library [similar to this](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21639724/web-scraping-with-vba-using-xmlhttp). This would be a pretty big step though if you don't have a coding background. "Every 12 hours" is unlikely though. You can set up a timer that will execute code every 12 hours, but the sheet must be open and it's kind of hinky. Excel isn't really the best place to be doing this kind of work anyway. – JNevill Apr 12 '17 at 17:39
  • Sounds good! Thank you to everybody for the constructive feedback :) – Liam Apr 12 '17 at 21:42

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