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alwweb's avatar
alwweb
Icon for Advocate II rankAdvocate II
9 years ago
Solved

Difference between importing a table and a worksheet

When I click Get Data | Excel | Connect, and then browse to my file, it gives me the option to import my tables and worksheets.  The icons are different for tables and worksheets.

 

Is there a benefit to using one over the other, or do you always want to pick one over the other?

  • Another advantage of tables is that they auto adjust their size to the actual data.

     

    If you would add some data somewhere else in your worksheet, it will be imported if you choose worksheet, but if you import from a table, you will only get the data from the table.

     

    So you should always use tables, unless your manager disapproves :smileylol:

3 Replies

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    Not applicable

    Hi alwweb

     

    Whenever possible I prefer to import Tables over Worksheets.

    Power Query aka GetData recognizes the Column Headers from Tables in more efficient way.

     

    • alwweb's avatar
      alwweb
      Icon for Advocate II rankAdvocate II

      Thank you for the reply.  Can you please provide more info?  I just imported a bunch of worksheets because the worksheet was named correctly and the tables on the worksheets were named Table1, Table2, etc.  It seemed to find all of the column names just fine.

       

      Was there something else that it is missing when I do it this way?

      • MarcelBeug's avatar
        MarcelBeug
        Icon for Community Champion rankCommunity Champion

        Another advantage of tables is that they auto adjust their size to the actual data.

         

        If you would add some data somewhere else in your worksheet, it will be imported if you choose worksheet, but if you import from a table, you will only get the data from the table.

         

        So you should always use tables, unless your manager disapproves :smileylol: