Excel is capable enough to handle multiple data types and from smaller to longer datasets. It does not matter at all whether you are a native or an immigrant; Excel lets you avail its features from basic to advance. Do you know how to scrape data from a website into Excel?
When your data is highly structured you need to apply multiple features for data analysis with the help of pivot tables or regression models. In this post, you will get to know how easily you can perform automated data extraction and scrape from websites to Excel.
How Web Scrapping in Excel Works?
Below are some points you need to consider while extracting external data from inside Excel:
- An active internet connection is mandatory.
- The URL used for data pulling must be having a static data table on the page.
- In the case of file automation, the system must be having an active internet connection.
A web query is developed when web scrapping in Excel is set up. A web URL is used in this query that connects with the internet to extract the web page from a web server. The incoming HTML is being processed in Excel and unwraps tables that you can see on the page.
How to Scrape Data from a Website into Excel with Web Query?
With a Web Query, you can easily manage to scrape data from the internet. Here, we will elaborate on how you can scrape the “books.toscrape.com” website, finds the book data, and save it on the Excel sheet.
You need to ensure these points before getting started with this function.
- An active Internet connection
- Microsoft Office must be installed to use Excel.
Now, follow the steps given here:
- Open an empty sheet.
- Open the Data tab from the ribbon once a blank sheet is opened.
- Select the From Web option from the Data tab menu.
- A new window will pop up.
- Enter the Web URL in the given field bar.
- Click the Go button.
- You will see the URL in the text box:
“https://books.toscrape.com” and click “Go.”
- Move on to the book page.
- A mini web browser will pop up in which the website will appear.
- From there, you can browse the website.
- Open the book page by clicking on the book link.
- Click on the table you need to scrape from the book page. Click on the small yellow arrow icon.
- As the table gets selected, click on the Import button.
- Click the OK button after selecting the Existing worksheet option.
That’s it!
So, this is how Web Query helps in making the background process successful to work the web request and scrape the website. As the website scrapping is done, you can now analyze the table and get the data in the Excel columns.
Summary:
Web Scraping in Excel is a great thing. Excel lets you scrape data from the website easily. By using this feature, you can automate this function as well to make all time valuable dashboards. You can fetch the data tables from the web to update more often with the data you need.
Though this is a brief overview of the data scrapping trick from a website in Excel you must try it once.
