4.1 Getting data in from anywhere
You can import a CSV, a web table or a database extract without mangling it.
Before:01. Excel — First StepsUnlocks:06. Excel — Automation
Data usually arrives from somewhere else — a CSV export, a web table, a database extract — and this topic covers bringing it in without mangling encodings, delimiters or dates. It opens the cleaning module because import is where messiness enters. The central idea is the difference between pasting data and connecting to it: a paste is dead on arrival and next month means redoing everything, while a refreshable query does next month with one click. The common confusion is a CSV that opens looking wrong; that is nearly always an encoding or delimiter setting, not a broken file.
Work through these
CSV, text and delimiter/encoding problems
Delimited text files fail in predictable ways: the wrong separator, the wrong character encoding, and values that contain the separator itself. Recognising each symptom saves a long guessing session.
Importing from the web and from a folder of files
Data can be pulled from a page or from a whole folder of similar files at once. The folder case is what turns twelve monthly exports into one table without twelve manual steps.
Connections vs pasted data, and why pasting ages badly
Pasted data is a copy that stops being true the moment the source changes; a connection can be refreshed. This distinction is why the rest of this module exists.
Refreshable queries: the point of doing it this way
A query that can be re-run next month with no rework is the entire point of importing rather than pasting. The setup costs a little more once and nothing thereafter.
Practice file
- xl-06-messy-data.xlsx
A deliberately horrible export: merged headers, blank rows, mixed date formats, stray text in number columns. The Power Query exercise.
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