6/29/2021 How to Combine Two (Or More) Excel Spreadsheets Together

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BUSINESS > MICROSOFT EXCEL

How to Combine Two (Or More) Excel

Spreadsheets Together
by Andrew Childress 9 Feb 2018
Difficulty: Advanced Length: Medium Languages: English

Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets Microsoft How-To

If you're a Microsoft Excel user, it doesn't take long before you have many different
workbooks full of important spreadsheets. What happens when you need to combine
these multiple workbooks together so that all of the sheets are in the same place?

Excel can be challenging at times because it's so powerful. You know that what you want
to do is possible, but you might not know how to accomplish it. In this tutorial, I'll show
you several techniques you can use to merge Excel spreadsheets.

When you need to combine multiple spreadsheets, don't copy and paste the data from
each sheet manually. There are many shortcuts that you can use to save time in combining
workbooks, and I'll show you which one is right for each situation.

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Watch & Learn

The screencast below will show you how to combine Excel sheets into a single
consolidated workbook. I'll teach you to use PowerQuery (also called Get & Transform
Data) to pull together data from multiple workbooks.

Important: The email addresses used in this tutorial are fictitious (randomly generated) and
not intended to represent any real email addresses.

Read on to see written instructions. As always, Excel has multiple ways to accomplish this
task, and how you're working with your data will drive which approach is the best.

1. How to Move & Copy Sheets (Simplest

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The easiest method to merge Excel spreadsheets is to simply take the entire sheet and
copy it from one workbook to another.

To do this, start off by opening both Excel workbooks. Then, switch to the workbook that
you want to copy several sheets from.

Now, hold Control (or Command on Mac) on your keyboard and click on all of the sheets
that you want to copy to a separate workbook. You'll notice that as you do this, the tabs
will show as highlighted.

Now, simply right click and choose Move or Copy from the menu.

Control+click (or command+click) on all of the sheets that you want to move or copy between workbooks, then
right click and choose Move or Copy.

On the Move or Copy pop up window, the first thing that you'll want to do is select the
workbook that you want to move the sheets to. Choose the name of the file from the "To
book" drop-down.

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On the pop-up window, choose the workbook that you want to copy or move your sheets into, and ensure that you

check Create a copy if you don't want to move all of the sheets.

Also, you can choose where the sheets are placed in the new workbook in terms of
sequence. The Before sheet menu controls where sequentially in the workbook the sheets
will be inserted. You can always choose (move to end) and re-sequence the order the
sheets later as needed.

Finally, it's optional check the box to Create a copy, which will duplicate the sheets and
create a separate copy of them in the workbook you're moving the sheets to. Once you
press OK, you'll see that the sheets we copied are in the combined workbook.

Now, the two sheets we selected from a separate workbook are copied into the main workbook.

This approach has a few downsides. If you keep working with two separate files, they
aren't "in sync." If you make changes to the original workbook that you copied the
sheets from, they won't automatically update in the combined workbook.

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2. Prepare to Use Get & Transform Data Tools to

Combine Sheets
Excel has an incredibly powerful set of tools that are often called PowerQuery. Beginning
with Excel 2016, this feature set was rebranded as Get & Transform Data. 

As the name suggests, these are a set of tools that helps you pull data together from other
workbooks and consolidate it into one workbook.

In Excel 2016 for Windows or the Office365 version of Excel, you'll find this feature on the Data tab in the Get &

Transform options.

Also, this feature is exclusive to Excel for Windows. You won't find it in the Mac versions or
in the web browser edition of Microsoft's app.

Before You Start: Check the Data

The most important part of this process is checking your data before you start combining
it. The files need to have the same setup for the data structure, with the same columns.
You can't easily combine a four-column spreadsheet and a five-column spreadsheet, as
Excel won't know where to place the data.

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Before you try to combine data with Get & Transform Data feature, it really helps to ensure that the data is in the

same structure, with the same columns in each workbook you're combining.

Often, you'll find yourself needing to combine spreadsheets when you're downloading
data from systems. In that case, it's much easier to make sure the system you're
downloading data is configured to download data in the same columns each time.

Before I download data from a service like Google Analytics, I always make sure that I'm
downloading the same report format each time. This ensures that I can easily work with
and combine multiple spreadsheets together.

Whether you're pulling data from a system like Google Analytics, MailChimp, or an ERP
like SAP or Oracle that powers huge companies, the best way to save time is to ensure that
you're downloading data in a common format.

Now that we've checked our data, it's time to dive into learning how to combine Excel
sheets. 

3. How to Combine Excel Sheets in a Folder Full

of Files
A few times, I've had a folder full of files that I needed to put together into a single,
consolidated file. When you've got dozens or even hundreds of files, opening them one-
by-one to combine them just isn't feasible. Learning this technique can save you dozens of
hours on a single project.

Again, it's crucial that the data is in the same format. To get started, it helps to place all of
the files in the same folder so that Excel can easily watch this folder for changes. 

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Make sure that you've placed all of your Excel files in the same folder, then choose New Query > From File > From

Folder on Excel's ribbon.

Step 1. Point Excel to the Folder of Files

On the pop-up window, you'll want to specify a path to the folder that holds your Excel
workbooks.

Set the folder path to the folder with the files you want to combine.

You can browse to that path, or simply paste in the path to the folder with your
workbooks.

Step 2. Confirm the List of Files

After you show Excel where the workbooks are stored, a new window will pop up that
shows the list of files you're set to combine. Right now, you're only seeing metadata about
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the files, and not the data inside of it.

This window simply shows the files that are going to be combined with our query, 

This window simply shows the files that are going to be combined with our query. You'll
see the file name, the type, and the dates accessed and modified. If you're missing a file in
this list, confirm that all of the files are in the folder and retry the process.

To move on to the next step, click on Edit. 

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Step 3. Confirm the Combination

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The next menu helps to confirm the data inside your files. Since we've already checked
that data is the same structure in our multiple files, we can simply click OK on this step.

This is a check-step to ensure that our files are in the same structure, so simply press OK to move to the next step.

Step 4. How to Combine Excel Sheets With a Click

Now, a new window pops up with the list of files we're set to combine.

At this stage, you're still seeing metadata about the files and now the data itself. To solve
that, click on the double drop-down arrow in the upper right corner of the first column.

Click on the double drop-down arrow in the first column to load the source data from each file.

Voila! Now, you'll see the actual data from inside the files combined into one place. 

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Once you combine your data, you'll see all of it combined into one file, and the original filename shows in the first
column.

Scroll through the data to confirm that all of your rows are there. Notice that the only
change from your original data is that the filename of each source file is in the first
column.

Step 5. Close and Load the Data

Believe it or not, we're basically finished with combining our Excel spreadsheets. The data
is in the Query Editor for now, so we'll need to "send it back" to regular Excel so that we
can work with it.

Click on Close & Load in the upper right corner. You'll see the finished data in a regular
Excel spreadsheet, ready to review and work with.

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Once you click Close & Load, you'll see all of the data from the original files combined into one sheet.

Imagine using this feature to roll up multiple files from different members of your team.
Choose a folder that you'll each store files in, and then combine them into one cohesive
file with this feature in just a few minutes.

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Recap & Keep Learning

In this tutorial, you learned several techniques for how to combine Excel sheets. When
you've got many sheets that you need to stitch together, using one of these approaches
will save you time so that you can get back to the task at hand!

Check out some of the other tutorials to level up your Excel skills. Each of these tutorials
will teach you a method for accomplishing tasks in less time in Microsoft Excel.

MICR O S O FT EXCEL
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How do you merge Excel workbooks? Let me know in the comments section below
whether you've got a preference for these methods, or a technique of your own that you
use.

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Andrew Childress
I enjoy writing about productivity software that helps people do what they love,
faster. Get in touch at andrewchildress.com .

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