Difference between importing a table and a worksheet

[alwweb]

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?

[Anonymous]

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]

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 · Accepted solution]

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