This demonstration is over different ways to import data into microsoft excel version
2010. There are many different sources to import data from. The first example on importing
data I will give is from a text document. To import data first go to the data tab at
the top of the screen and then in the first section get external data. From a text document
or any other document you would select "from text". The import text file box opens and
you can select which document you want to import into excel. In this case I want to
import the document "water density". I select that and click import. There are different
options to choose from when importing data. The option "delimited" means that there is
something separating the different data sets. The options "fixed width" means that each
column is a specific number of characters long and then there is a space and another
column of a specific number of characters. I am going to use "delimited" to import from
this data. After selecting "delimited" and then I select "next". As you can see from
the black line showing in the preview it is already "delimited" or separating the data
into two separate columns at that location. In the delimiter is a tab so this original
data had the individual data sets separated by a tab. Other things that can separate the
columns of the data are semi-colons, commas, spaces or anything else you specify. I am
going to leave it as tab and click next. This particular window allows you to choose the
format of a specific column. Normally it picks the format as general but you can change it
to text, date, or even tell it not to import a specific column. None of these options I
need to change so I am going to just click finish. Now it is asking where I want the
data. Since I want it on this worksheet I am going to leave that selected. If I leave
it as "A1" it will try to enter it into this top corner where there is already data present.
Instead I am going to change the location to "A7" and select "ok". Now that data from
that text document has automatically been imported and placed in the cell "A7" to whatever
range the data needed. As you can see this is already nicely formatted. The only thing
that I would change is to bold the tops of the columns to make them more visible and
to change these to center alignment so that the data will be aligned better under specific
column titles. Now we can try and import a different type of data file. If we go back
to data from text I am going to import "thermalcoupledata" which is a specific file associated with microsoft
excel but in this case the data is separated by a comma which is the "csv" comma separated
values. Click import "delimited" and next. I am going to select comma in this case and
you can see in the preview that by selecting comma it lines these up in nice columns. If
I remove column it tries to stick them all into a single column. Once again I do not
want to change the data format so I will just click finish. Here I want to insert the data
into this cell. Press "enter" and then click ok. You can see when you scroll that the data
has once again been entered although in this case I would like to wrap the information
within the cells and change the column width. As you can see unfortunately it did not automatically
resize the height of the column so I am going to manually do that now. Once again I am going
to center and bold and then center the data underneath. There are two examples to import
data from files however you can also import data directly from a website. I am going to
move to my second tab which I named "Boulder". This tab I named "Boulder" because the data
I want to import into the spreadsheet is climate data from Boulder Colorado. If I open up my
web browser. This is the climate data from Boulder Colorado and as you can see it is
already nicely formatted on the website. What I do is I highlight and copy with "control
C" the website url. Then I go back to excel and do data and import from web. Then I past
the url here. It goes to the website that I am looking at. These arrows you see here
will allow you to choose what portions of the data to import. I am going to select this
inner arrow to import just the inner amount of data although I think in this case it doesn't
make a difference. I will select import and since there is nothing in this data sheet
I will select "ok" for entering it into the first cell. As you can see it did not import
it in a very nice manner. Although the data was separated well on the website it was still
single lines of data rather than a table. Importing a table from a website is much easier.
If I go to Astoria which is another I am working with and back to the web browser. Here for
Astoria, Oregon is additional climate data that has been arranged into rows and columns.
I copy that and go back to excel and paste this website instead. I then select this table
on the inside. If I import it into the first you can that this automatically imports it
and converts it into rows and columns. If you want the data from the Boulder site it
is not completely useless to use that website. You just have to do it in a different manner.
I am going to open up a new worksheet and I am going to name" Boulder 2". Now when I
go back to this website I am going to press control and "A" to select the entire website
and then control and "C" to copy. Then I am going to open up a note pad document. I press
control and "V" to paste it in the note pad. It pastes it almost exactly the way it appears
on the website. Since the website was purely text and no formatting using note pad will
keep it as purely text. We will save this as "Boulder". Going back to excel I will import
this from text once more and I open up "Boulder". My data has been input into rows and columns
with the exception of the text at the top and the bottom of the screen. Since this was
separated by spaces every time there was a space it tried to separate even the words
into their own cells. What I will do is delete that and go back to the beginning and delete
this. The only issue is that it no longer has any column headers at the top. I would
have to go back to the website and find the names of these columns and relabel those.
One more thing I would like to cover is a copy and pasting technique. For example if
I copy this set of data and use control "C" to copy but I do not want it in a column.
Instead I want it in a row. You select a new cell and go to "home" then click on the arrow
below paste for paste special. Here you can choose to transpose it which will move a row
to a column and a column to a row. You can also do the same thing by right clicking and
finding that same option here. Now my data has been pasted into a row. This is extremely
useful to know when you are importing data from an exterior source because you may have
data that is completely one single row when you need it separated into columns.