To create a new ODBC data source, use the Windows ODBC Data Source Administrator dialog. You can bring up this dialog in one of these ways:

• Click the ODBC Admin button in the Setup or Manage Databases dialogs.

• If you use a 64-bit computer, you have to use the 32-bit ODBC Administrator rather than the default 64-bit one. To do that, open Window Explorer, navigate to C:\Windows\SysWoW64, find ODBCAD32.exe, and double-click it.

• Click the Windows Start button, type "ODBC", and choose "ODBC Data Sources (32-bit)" from the list.

The ODBC Data Source Administrator dialog appears similar to the following.

To create a new data source, do the following steps:

Step 1. In either the User DSN or System DSN pages, click the Add button. The Create New Data Source dialog appears, looking something like the following. Select the appropriate driver, and click the Finish button.

What happens next depends on the driver you selected. The rest of these steps assume you are using the SQL Server driver. Please see your system administrator for assistance with other drivers.

Step 2. The setup dialog appears. Type something descriptive for the Name (such as "My Database") and Description, then choose the server from the drop-down list.

Step 3. Click the Next button to go to the next page of the dialog. Check with your system administrator to see what settings to use in this page; you can leave the choices set at their default values if you aren't sure what settings to use.

Step 4. Click the Next button to go to the next page of the dialog. Turn on the Change the default database to setting, select the database you want to query on from the list (you may have to ask your system administrator for the name of the database). You can leave the rest of the settings at their default values.

Step 5. Click the Next button to go to the next page of the dialog. Check with your system administrator to see what settings to use in this page; you can leave the choices set at their default values if you aren't sure what settings to use.

Step 6. Click the Finish button to finish the setup. You then see a dialog that looks something like the following. Click the Test Data Source button to ensure everything works, then click the OK button.

Step 7. If you have accounting data for more than one company in Sage 300 and want to report on them too, set up another ODBC data source just as you did this one by going back to Step 1. When you're finished setting up data sources, click on the OK button in the ODBC Data Source Administrator dialog.