Are you tired of manually copying and pasting data from the web into Microsoft Excel? There’s an easier way to do it! By connecting Excel to the data source, your spreadsheet will automatically reflect the latest changes. In this article, we’ll show you how to import data from the web directly into Excel.
First, let’s say you want to pull in data from a website like Wikipedia or the latest stock prices. Or maybe you want to pull in cookie sales data on your competitors in the cookie industry. Whatever it may be, you don’t have to manually copy and paste data over into Microsoft Excel. Instead, you can connect Excel to the data source.
To do this, click on the “Data” tab in Excel. Under “Get & Transform Data,” select “From Web.” Type in the URL of the website where you want to get the data from. Keep in mind that the data has to be contained within a table on the website. If it’s not in a table, Excel will be unable to retrieve the data.
Excel will then make a connection to the website and open up the navigator on the left-hand side. Here, you can see all the different elements on the site that Excel found. You can load the data directly into Microsoft Excel as is, or you can transform the data to make edits before bringing it into your spreadsheet.
Once the data is in your spreadsheet, Excel is now connected to the data. If the data updates often, you can simply click on “Refresh” to refresh your data. You can even define how often the sheet should refresh, whether it’s every time you open the file or at a specific time interval.
If you want to make changes to the data and not have it affected by a refresh, you can use the transform option. Click into “Query” and on the far left-hand side, select “Edit.” This will open up the power query editor where you can transform your data before bringing it into Excel. You can run calculations, append data, and more.
For example, if you no longer want to include a certain column in your analysis, you can remove it using the power query editor. Once you make the change, anytime you refresh your data, it’ll reflect that change.
By using these techniques, you can easily import data from the web directly into Microsoft Excel. Say goodbye to manually copying and pasting data and hello to higher value activities like watching videos on YouTube!