Yes.
ThisWorkbook.RefreshAll
Or, if your Excel version is old enough,
Dim Sheet as WorkSheet, Pivot as PivotTable
For Each Sheet in ThisWorkbook.WorkSheets
For Each Pivot in Sheet.PivotTables
Pivot.RefreshTable
Pivot.Update
Next
Next
You can use a library called ExcelLibrary. It's a free, open source library posted on Google Code:
ExcelLibrary
This looks to be a port of the PHP ExcelWriter that you mentioned above. It will not write to the new .xlsx format yet, but they are working on adding that functionality in.
It's very simple, small and easy to use. Plus it has a DataSetHelper that lets you use DataSets and DataTables to easily work with Excel data.
ExcelLibrary seems to still only work for the older Excel format (.xls files), but may be adding support in the future for newer 2007/2010 formats.
You can also use EPPlus, which works only for Excel 2007/2010 format files (.xlsx files). There's also NPOI which works with both.
There are a few known bugs with each library as noted in the comments. In all, EPPlus seems to be the best choice as time goes on. It seems to be more actively updated and documented as well.
Also, as noted by @АртёмЦарионов below, EPPlus has support for Pivot Tables and ExcelLibrary may have some support (Pivot table issue in ExcelLibrary)
Here are a couple links for quick reference:
ExcelLibrary - GNU Lesser GPL
EPPlus - GNU (LGPL) - No longer maintained
EPPlus 5 - Polyform Noncommercial - Starting May 2020
NPOI - Apache License
Here some example code for ExcelLibrary:
Here is an example taking data from a database and creating a workbook from it. Note that the ExcelLibrary code is the single line at the bottom:
//Create the data set and table
DataSet ds = new DataSet("New_DataSet");
DataTable dt = new DataTable("New_DataTable");
//Set the locale for each
ds.Locale = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;
dt.Locale = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;
//Open a DB connection (in this example with OleDB)
OleDbConnection con = new OleDbConnection(dbConnectionString);
con.Open();
//Create a query and fill the data table with the data from the DB
string sql = "SELECT Whatever FROM MyDBTable;";
OleDbCommand cmd = new OleDbCommand(sql, con);
OleDbDataAdapter adptr = new OleDbDataAdapter();
adptr.SelectCommand = cmd;
adptr.Fill(dt);
con.Close();
//Add the table to the data set
ds.Tables.Add(dt);
//Here's the easy part. Create the Excel worksheet from the data set
ExcelLibrary.DataSetHelper.CreateWorkbook("MyExcelFile.xls", ds);
Creating the Excel file is as easy as that. You can also manually create Excel files, but the above functionality is what really impressed me.
Best Answer
ActiveWorkbook.RefreshAll does as in matter of fact RefreshAll connections and pivots. However, in your scenario the pivots are probably based on the data you have to refresh first. The pivot will refresh while the data is not loaded yet, hence the unexpected behavior.
There are multiple solutions for this:
Either have the data returned through the connection as a pivotcache so the pivot table will automatically refresh when the data is returned. This way you will not have the data itself stored in a seperate sheet in your workbook either.
Set the "Refresh in Background" property to false for all connections, either in the code or through the UI, then execute as normally. Twice. The second time the pivotcaches will have the updated data and thus refresh as expected. - Edit: I do not recommend this, since you will open the db connection twice, load the data twice, etc. Highly inefficient!
Set the "Refresh in Background"- property to false as mentioned above. After refreshing using Refresh all, loop through your worksheets' pivottable collection to refresh those manually after the data has been loaded as shown below.
Code:
Or simply refresh only the pivotcaches (more efficient, especially if multiple tables use the same cache):