The default ShufflePoint IQY files have four parameters: key, profile, timeframe, and query. Customers often ask if they can remove some parameters to make data imports more streamlined.

You can certainly edit the IQY and remove timeframe and profile. I always keep such a file handy (see attached). They can be removed because they are optional. If these parameters are not specified in the query or in the IQY parameter, it will use your ShufflePoint defaults. The authentication key is not optional so it must be present either as a parameter or as a static string in the IQY file. The IQY files you download from ShufflePoint have the key as a parameter. You could place it in the IQY file. But to understand why it is not advisable, you need to understand something about how Excel works with web queries.

When you create a data import from an IQY file, Excel copies the IQY contents into the web query within Excel - it doesn't make a reference to the IQY file. So if you create a workbook with 20 queries, you effectively have 20 copies (which are only visible programmatically) of that key. If for some reason you want to change the key, you would have to run a macro to change all the keys (see this blog entry).

Another reason to leave the key as a parameter is to control access. Let's say you want to share the report with a client and you don't want that client to be able to run the report. If you have the key in a single Excel cell, you can just clear the cell. Then no recipient of the report will be able to refresh it. If the key was inside the IQY then it will be inside Excel, and unless you remove all the queries, a recipient of the workbook will be able to run arbitrary queries.

For these two reasons - account flexibility and access control - we advise people to keep the key a parameter even though it does mean an extra click when adding a new query. There is nothing technically preventing you from replacing the key parameter in the IQY with a static key, but you should understand the tradeoffs.