8. If you want to be able to use this query in the future, click the Save Query button and specify the name in the resulting Save As dialog box. Excel’s default location for saving queries is your %userprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Queries folder. You may want to save the query elsewhere (for example, on a network drive) so that your colleagues can use it as well. Once you’ve saved a query, you can reuse it by choosing Choose Data | Import External Data | New Database Query, selecting the query on the Queries tab of the Choose Data Source dialog box, and clicking OK. 9. Click the Finish button. Excel displays the Import Data dialog box: 10. Specify whether to import the data into the current worksheet, into a new worksheet, or to create a PivotTable with it. Then click the OK button. Excel imports the data in the way you specified and displays the External Data toolbar: The External Data toolbar offers these buttons for working with the data that you’ve imported: ■ Edit Query Relaunches the Query wizard for editing the query. ■ Data Range Properties Displays the External Data Range Properties dialog box (shown here), which contains options for saving the query definition, protecting it with a password, controlling how and when Excel refreshes the query, and specifying formatting and layout options for the external data. These options are largely self-explanatory once you know where to find them. 202 How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 HowTo-Tght (8) / How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 / Hart-Davis / 3071-1 / Chapter 9 Refresh All Refresh StatusCancel RefreshEdit Query Data Range Properties Refresh External Data Query Parameters P:\010Comp\HowTo8\071-1\ch09.vp Wednesday, August 27, 2003 1:46:37 PM Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen 9 CHAPTER 9: Organize Data with Excel Databases 203 HowTo-Tght (8) / How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 / Hart-Davis / 3071-1 / Chapter 9 ■ Query Parameters Displays the Parameters dialog box, in which you can check or change the parameters for the query: ■ Refresh External Data Forces an immediate refresh of the active external range. ■ Cancel Refresh Cancels an ongoing refresh (for example, if it’s taking too long). ■ Refresh All Forces immediate refreshes of all external ranges in the active workbook. ■ Refresh Status Displays the External Data Refresh Status dialog box, which shows you which query is being refreshed and enables you to stop the refresh. This dialog box is useful when you’re trying to refresh all external ranges and need to see which refresh is getting stuck. You can also refresh the data by choosing Data | Refresh External Data. P:\010Comp\HowTo8\071-1\ch09.vp Wednesday, August 27, 2003 1:46:37 PM Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen 204 How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 HowTo-Tght (8) / How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 / Hart-Davis / 3071-1 / Chapter 9 Customize a Query with MS Query By using MS Query, you can create a custom query that contains only the data you need, or a parameter query that enables you to specify values for given parameters each time you refresh the data. To create either kind of query, follow these steps: 1. Follow steps 1 to 6 of the procedure in the previous section, “Link to a Database with the Query Wizard,” to run the Query wizard and define your query. 2. On the Query Wizard - Finish screen, select the View Data or Edit Query in MS Query option. 3. Click Finish. The Query wizard displays MS Query. 4. If the Criteria fields aren’t visible, click the Show/Hide Criteria or choose View | Criteria to display them. 5. Define criteria for the query (see the following sections for details). 6. Save the query by choosing File | Save, specifying the name and location in the Save As dialog box, and clicking the OK button. 7. Choose File | Return Data to Microsoft Excel to return the data from the query to Excel. Creating a Custom Query To create a custom query, proceed to step 5 in the “Customize a Query with MS Query” procedure, and then define criteria by following these steps: 1. Click in the first Criteria Field box and select the field you want to use for the criteria from the resulting drop-down list. 2. In the first Value field, enter the value for the field. Figure 9-3 shows a query under construction. 3. Add further criteria as necessary. When you move the focus from the first Value field, MS Query displays the Enter Parameter Value dialog box with the prompt you set. 4. If necessary, choose Criteria | Remove All Criteria to remove all criteria, and then start again. Creating a Parameter Query To create a parameter query, proceed to step 5 in the “Customize a Query with MS Query” procedure, and then follow these steps: 1. Click in the first Criteria Field box and select the field you want to use for the criteria from the resulting drop-down list. P:\010Comp\HowTo8\071-1\ch09.vp Wednesday, August 27, 2003 1:46:37 PM Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen 9 2. In the Value field below the Criteria Field box, type an opening bracket ([), the prompt that MS Query should display to elicit the information from you, and a closing bracket (]). For example: CHAPTER 9: Organize Data with Excel Databases 205 HowTo-Tght (8) / How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 / Hart-Davis / 3071-1 / Chapter 9 FIGURE 9-3 Use MS Query to create a custom query for extracting information from a database. P:\010Comp\HowTo8\071-1\ch09.vp Wednesday, August 27, 2003 1:46:38 PM Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen 3. Add further criteria as necessary. When you move the focus from the first Value field, MS Query displays the Enter Parameter Value dialog box with the prompt you set: After creating a parameter query and returning to Excel, you can change the criteria for the query by clicking the Refresh button (or choosing Data | Refresh External Data Source). Excel displays an Enter Parameter Value dialog box for each criterion you defined. When you’ve specified criteria, Excel returns the records that match them. Perform Web Queries Excel can also extract data from tables in web pages by using its built-in Web Query feature. To use Web Query, follow these steps: 1. Open Internet Explorer and browse to the page that contains the table you’re interested in. 2. Select a table or a cell, right-click, and choose Copy from the shortcut menu to copy it to the Clipboard. 3. Activate Excel and the worksheet in which you want the data to appear. 4. Right-click the cell in which the upper-left corner of the data should appear, and choose Paste from the shortcut menu. 5. Click the Paste Options Smart Tag that results from the Paste operation, and choose the Create Refreshable Web Query option. Excel displays the New Web Query dialog box with a black-on-yellow arrow next to each available table on the page: 206 How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 HowTo-Tght (8) / How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 / Hart-Davis / 3071-1 / Chapter 9 P:\010Comp\HowTo8\071-1\ch09.vp Wednesday, August 27, 2003 1:46:38 PM Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen 9 6. Click the arrow for each table or cell you want to add. Excel changes the arrow to a black-on-green check mark. 7. Click the Options button to display the Web Query Options dialog box (shown next) and specify the import settings you want to use for the table. The most important settings are the options in the Formatting section, which enable you to choose among full HTML formatting, rich-text formatting, and no formatting (plain text). You can also specify import settings for preformatted blocks, disable date recognition, and disable web query redirections. Click the OK button to close the Web Query Options dialog box and return to the New Web Query dialog box. CHAPTER 9: Organize Data with Excel Databases 207 HowTo-Tght (8) / How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 / Hart-Davis / 3071-1 / Chapter 9 P:\010Comp\HowTo8\071-1\ch09.vp Wednesday, August 27, 2003 1:46:38 PM Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen 8. Click Import. Excel creates a live link in the worksheet to the table on the web page. You can also perform a web query by choosing Data | Import External Data | New Web Query and typing the URL in the New Web Query dialog box. In most cases, using copy and paste, as described in the previous procedure, is faster and easier. After creating the link, you can refresh the data in the link by selecting it and clicking the Refresh button on the External Data toolbar. To refresh all of the links on the active worksheet, click the Refresh All button. 208 How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 HowTo-Tght (8) / How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 / Hart-Davis / 3071-1 / Chapter 9 P:\010Comp\HowTo8\071-1\ch09.vp Wednesday, August 27, 2003 1:46:38 PM Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen HowTo-Tght (8) / How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 / Hart-Davis / 3071-1 / Chapter 10 blind folio 209 Chapter 10 Outline and Consolidate Worksheets P:\010Comp\HowTo8\071-1\ch10.vp Wednesday, August 27, 2003 2:16:45 PM Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen How to… ■ Use outlining to create collapsible worksheets ■ Create a standard outline automatically ■ Create a custom outline manually ■ Expand and collapse an outline ■ Change an outlined area after adding or deleting material ■ Remove an outline from a worksheet ■ Consolidate multiple worksheets into one worksheet by position or by category ■ Update or change an existing consolidation E ven if you don’t create databases (as described in Chapter 9), Excel worksheets can grow so that they’re far longer than will fit on even the highest-resolution display. Working with monster worksheets tends to be awkward and time-consuming, especially when you need to scroll frequently to view the relevant parts of the worksheet. In the first part of this chapter, you’ll learn how to use Excel’s outlining features to create a collapsible worksheet. By defining a hierarchy for a worksheet, you can collapse it to its key areas, which—with any luck—you can fit on screen at the same time. Another problem you’re likely to run into when using Excel at work is needing to integrate data from multiple similar worksheets into a single worksheet. You may need to do this for a variety of reasons—from turning an archive of workbooks into a single useful resource to circulating a workbook amongst your colleagues to gather necessary input. Integrating multiple worksheets manually tends to be a long and thankless task, but Excel’s tools for consolidating worksheets can save you a great deal of time and effort. Use Outlining to Create Collapsible Worksheets For extensive worksheets built around some form of hierarchy, Excel’s outlining tools can prove invaluable. For example, the sales worksheet shown in Figure 10-1 tracks the sales of products by reps, groups of reps, and regional offices, and by months, quarters, and years. In its normal state, as shown in the upper part of the figure, the worksheet extends across many columns and down through nearly 30 rows. But when the worksheet has an outline applied to it, you can collapse it to any various levels to display different amounts of information. The lower part of the figure shows the worksheet with outlining applied and the result partially collapsed. As you saw in Chapter 4, you can hide columns or rows that you don’t want to have displayed by choosing Format | Column | Hide or Format | Row | Hide. You can use hiding to produce a similar effect to collapsing, but it’s so much slower and clumsier that doing so is seldom worthwhile. 210 How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 HowTo-Tght (8) / How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 / Hart-Davis / 3071-1 / Chapter 10 P:\010Comp\HowTo8\071-1\ch10.vp Wednesday, August 27, 2003 2:16:45 PM Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen 10 CHAPTER 10: Outline and Consolidate Worksheets 211 HowTo-Tght (8) / How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 / Hart-Davis / 3071-1 / Chapter 10 FIGURE 10-1 If a worksheet contains a hierarchy, you can use outlining to collapse it. P:\010Comp\HowTo8\071-1\ch10.vp Wednesday, August 27, 2003 2:16:46 PM Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen [...]... field items in the subtotals P:\010Comp\HowTo8\071-1\ch11.vp Thursday, August 28, 2003 12:04:22 PM HowTo-Tght Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile (8) / How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 / Hart-Davis / 3071-1 / Chapter 11 Composite Default screen 234 How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 FIGURE 11-4 Choose settings in the PivotTable Options dialog box to configure... you need to redo the outline To do so, choose Data | Group and Outline | Auto Outline again, and then click the OK button in the dialog box that Excel displays asking whether you want to modify the existing outline: P:\010Comp\HowTo8\071-1\ch10.vp Wednesday, August 27, 2003 2: 16: 46 PM HowTo-Tght Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile (8) / How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 /... memory, you shouldn’t need to worry about conserving memory during refreshes P:\010Comp\HowTo8\071-1\ch11.vp Thursday, August 28, 2003 12:04:22 PM 11 HowTo-Tght Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile (8) / How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 / Hart-Davis / 3071-1 / Chapter 11 Composite Default screen 2 36 How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Create PivotCharts from...HowTo-Tght Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile (8) / How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 / Hart-Davis / 3071-1 / Chapter 10 Composite Default screen 212 How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 An outline can have up to eight outline levels for rows and up to eight outline levels for columns, enabling you to create highly collapsible worksheets The outline shown... P:\010Comp\HowTo8\071-1\ch11.vp Thursday, August 28, 2003 12:04:21 PM 11 HowTo-Tght Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile (8) / How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 / Hart-Davis / 3071-1 / Chapter 11 Composite Default screen 232 How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Chart Wizard PivotTable Menu Format Report Include Hidden Items in Totals Show Detail Hide Detail Refresh External... profile (8) / How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 / Hart-Davis / 3071-1 / Chapter 11 Composite Default screen 2 26 How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 3 Choose Data | PivotTable and PivotChart Report Excel displays the first screen of the PivotTable and PivotChart Wizard: 4 Make sure the Microsoft Excel List or Database option button and the PivotTable option button are... OK button to close the Consolidate dialog box Excel consolidates the data into the specified cells FIGURE 10-4 Use the Consolidate dialog box to add the references for all the worksheets you want to consolidate P:\010Comp\HowTo8\071-1\ch10.vp Wednesday, August 27, 2003 2: 16: 48 PM 10 HowTo-Tght Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile (8) / How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 /... Thursday, August 28, 2003 12:04:18 PM Analyze Data Using PivotTables and PivotCharts HowTo-Tght Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile (8) / How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 / Hart-Davis / 3071-1 / Chapter 11 Composite Default screen 224 How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 How to ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ Understand PivotTables Create a PivotTable framework using the PivotTable... button or the Columns option button, as appropriate 4 Click the OK button to close the Group dialog box and apply the grouping To ungroup grouped columns or rows, follow these steps: 1 Select the cells you want to affect P:\010Comp\HowTo8\071-1\ch10.vp Wednesday, August 27, 2003 2: 16: 46 PM 10 HowTo-Tght Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile (8) / How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel. .. you’ll need to edit those formulas manually to change the consolidation P:\010Comp\HowTo8\071-1\ch10.vp Wednesday, August 27, 2003 2: 16: 48 PM HowTo-Tght (8) / How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 / Hart-Davis / 3071-1 / Chapter 11 Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen blind folio 223 Chapter 11 P:\010Comp\HowTo8\071-1\ch11.vp Thursday, August 28, 2003 12:04:18 . either 2 16 How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 HowTo-Tght (8) / How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 / Hart-Davis / 3071-1 / Chapter 10 P:10CompHowTo871-1ch10.vp Wednesday,. and clumsier that doing so is seldom worthwhile. 210 How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 HowTo-Tght (8) / How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 / Hart-Davis. largely self-explanatory once you know where to find them. 202 How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 HowTo-Tght (8) / How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 / Hart-Davis