Retrieving Auto-updated Data Added to Table in Excel: A Comprehensive Guide

Using Power Query

Power Query is a powerful data integration tool that comes with Excel. It allows you to connect to various data sources, transform and clean the data, and load it into Excel. Here's how to use Power Query to retrieve auto-updated data:

1. Go to the Data tab in the Excel ribbon and click on Get Data.

2. In the Get Data dialog box, select the data source you want to connect to (e.g., From Other Sources > Blank Query for a custom connection).

3. Follow the prompts to set up the connection. Once you have connected to the data source, click on Close & Load to load the data into Excel.

4. To set up auto-updating, go to the Data tab, click on Get Data, and then click on Refresh All.

Power Query supports various data sources, including web pages, databases, and cloud services. For more information, refer to the Power Query documentation.

Using VBA

Another way to retrieve auto-updated data in Excel is by using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). Here's how to use VBA to retrieve data from a web page:

1. Press Alt + F11 to open the Visual Basic for Applications editor.

2. Go to Insert > Module to create a new module.

3. Write the VBA code to retrieve the data from the web page. Here's an example:

   Sub GetData()
    Dim objHTTP As Object
    Dim strURL As String
    Dim strHTML As String
    Set objHTTP = CreateObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP")
    strURL = "https://example.com/data.html"
    objHTTP.Open "GET", strURL, False
    objHTTP.send
    strHTML = objHTTP.responseText
    ' Process the HTML data here
    End Sub
   

4. Press F5 to run the macro. The data will be retrieved from the web page and stored in the strHTML variable.

5. Write the code to parse the HTML data and load it into Excel.

For more information on VBA and web scraping, refer to the Excel Guru website.

Using Google Apps Script

If you prefer to use Google services, you can use Google Apps Script to retrieve auto-updated data from a web page and write it to an Excel file. Here's how:

1. Go to script.google.com and create a new project.

2. Write the Google Apps Script code to retrieve the data from the web page and write it to an Excel file. Here's an example:

   function getData() {
    var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getActiveSheet();
    var url = "https://example.com/data.html";
    var html = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url).getContentText();
    var data = Utilities.parseJson(html);
    sheet.getRange(1, 1, data.length, data[0].length).setValues(data);
    }
   

3. Save the script and run the getData function.

4. Connect your Google Spreadsheet to Excel using the Google Sheets Add-in for Excel.

For more information on Google Apps Script, refer to the Google Apps Script documentation.

Summary

In this comprehensive guide, we explored how to retrieve auto-updated data and add it to an Excel table using Power Query, VBA, and Google Apps Script. Power Query is a powerful data integration tool that allows you to connect to various data sources and load them into Excel with just a few clicks. VBA is a versatile programming language that can be used to scrape data from web pages and load it into Excel. Google Apps Script is a cloud-based scripting language that can be used to retrieve data from web pages and write it to an Excel file.

• Power Query documentation
• Excel Guru website
• Google Apps Script documentation