09.19.16



Excel Basics Day 1: Import that Data





Hello there and welcome to a second 5-day mini blog!

I tried something new and made videos. Kind of like those cooking videos that make complicated dishes like 14 seconds long.

For me, the videos are about a minute long. The great thing is, you can pause whenever you want! I recommend this for any hasty instructions, and please, if they are still unclear ask me.

Without further ado, the following video will show you how to bring data in from a not-so pretty source (the internet) and make it manageable! For instance, you do not want a full name in a column. You want two columns, one with “First” and “Last”. This is a big part of data normalization!





Click gif to watch full video



Data can be imported through a variety of ways.

What we covered is more copying data into Excel. You can import .csv files, make connections with a data base, and even automate collecting website data! I plan to do these later.

Video Breakdown

9 seconds: Keep the data selected. DATA tab and ‘Text to Columns’. A menu will pop up!

14 seconds: This menu will present you with two options. Delimited means you want to separate on things like periods, commas or inconsistent spaces. Fixed means the data is already aligned in columns and needs separation. We go with Delimited for this one.