TUG (The Users Group for Sage Construction and Real Estate) has numerous classes and materials on setting up and working with ODBC with Excel, Access and Word.  I am one of their volunteer instructors and am just wrapping up 3 1/2 days of teaching that specific topic at the National Conference in San Antonio.  If you can't make a conference, TUG offers short webinars throughout the year on various topics, which are free to TUG members.  We were just discussing adding some ODBC ones later this year.  We also have an online support forum (TUGTalk) where users exchange info including ODBC.  Check their website (www.tugweb,com) for the latest training schedules.

Regarding the overall concept, basic tasks like simple queries, reports, pivot tables and graphs are fairly easy.  You set up a data source in Windows using the 32 bit ODBC data source program and point it to the Sage 300 data folder you want to work with.  You can then actively link the data to Excel using MS Query. (In Excel 2016, Data->Get Data->From Other Sources->From MS Query).   More advanced task like financial statements take considerably more time to learn however they are quite within the ability of anyone with decent Excel experience.  I am also an end user and can tell you almost all our financial reporting is done using ODBC and Excel. 

TUG (The Users Group for Sage Construction and Real Estate) has numerous classes and materials on setting up and working with ODBC with Excel, Access and Word.  I am one of their volunteer instructors and am just wrapping up 3 1/2 days of teaching that specific topic at the National Conference in San Antonio.  If you can't make a conference, TUG offers short webinars throughout the year on various topics, which are free to TUG members.  We were just discussing adding some ODBC ones later this year.  We also have an online support forum (TUGTalk) where users exchange info including ODBC.  Check their website (www.tugweb,com) for the latest training schedules.

Regarding the overall concept, basic tasks like simple queries, reports, pivot tables and graphs are fairly easy.  You set up a data source in Windows using the 32 bit ODBC data source program and point it to the Sage 300 data folder you want to work with.  You can then actively link the data to Excel using MS Query. (In Excel 2016, Data->Get Data->From Other Sources->From MS Query).   More advanced task like financial statements take considerably more time to learn however they are quite within the ability of anyone with decent Excel experience.  I am also an end user and can tell you almost all our financial reporting is done using ODBC and Excel.