Help
Transferring data from the web into Excel
- On the web page click the link to the data table.
- Depending on how your browser is set up, one of two things is going
to happen. The browser may recognize the file type and will launch Excel
(if it is not open already) and load the transferred file into Excel and
you are basically done. The alternative is that the browser will ask you
to save the file, because it cannot recognize the file type.
- Save the file in the sub-directory that you have created for this class.
- Launch Excel and open the file. If you do not see the file in the Excel
Open dialogue, change the Type of File at the bottom of the
Open window to All Files. Highlight the file name and hit
the Open button.
- The Text Import Wizard will open. Typically your data files
will be delimeted by tabs (.tsv files) or commas (.csv files). Select the
delimited option and hit the Finish button.
- If the above results in a weird looking spreadsheet with improper alligned
columns etc. open the file again and instead of hitting the Finish button,
use the Next button that will guide you through several options
how to interpret the file.
- Make sure that you save the file as a Microsoft Workbook. In
order to do this go to the File menu, select Save as, pick
an appropriate file name that describes the content of the file and select
Microsoft Workbook under the option Save as type. If you
do not change the type to workbook, any formulas you may have entered or
any charts you may have created will be lost, because the file will be
saved in its original format, which is typically text.