If you’re an Excel user, you already know that pasting data from other sources usually doesn’t go as planned. Broken formatting, jumbled rows and columns, and all sorts of other problems are present when you manually copy and paste data into Excel.
Fortunately, there’s a more efficient way to import data into Excel. Excel provides a handy feature called Power Query, which can easily import data from websites straight into your Excel spreadsheet.
What Is Power Query in Excel?
Before delving into importing data from websites into Excel, let’s first understand what Power Query is and why it’s such an essential tool in Excel. Power Query is an advanced data transformation and connection engine designed by Microsoft.
This engine is integrated into various services and programs, including Excel. With Power Query, Excel can provide a user-friendly interface to access and manipulate data from databases, files, and websites.
Power Query helps automate the data acquisition process and removes manual intervention. It’s available as a built-in feature in Excel for both Windows and Mac, and it can save you significant time and effort when working with web data.
How to Import Data From Websites Into Excel With Power Query
Power Query for Excelis known as Get & Transform. It can handle various formats such as HTML, JSON, XML, and more. This tool lets Excel import data from online services like SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange, Dynamics 365, and Salesforce.
If the website you want to import data from isn’t listed in Excel’s Get & Transform, you can opt for the import data from the web option. This will find the data tables on the web page and import them.
To import data from a website in Excel, follow these steps:
Excel will now access the webpage and gather the available data tables. You’ll see a list of different data tables in the new window. Select the data table that you want to import to see a preview of it.
If you’re happy with the way the data table preview looks, clickLoadto import it to your Excel worksheet as it is.
Alternatively, you may clickTransform Datatomake changes to data in the Power Query editor. Once you’ve transformed the data, clickClose & Loadto import it into your Excel worksheet.
From Web to Excel
Importing data from a website into Excel using Power Query is a game-changer for anyone dealing with web data sources. It streamlines the data acquisition process, reduces your manual work, and ensures your workbooks are up-to-date.
By following the simple steps outlined in this article, you’re able to harness Power Query to enhance your Excel data analysis and reporting capabilities. So, remember to leverage this feature the next time you need to gather data from the web!
