Web Query, Part Two

 - This lessons follows on from the previous one
The problem with the spreadsheet in the previous section is that it looks a little dull. This second web page you're going to download into Excel is little more colourful. So do the following:

• Click on Sheet 2 of your spreadsheet, and click inside cell A1
• Run a Web Query just like you did in the previous section: Data > Get External Data > New Web Query
• This time, when the dialogue box pops up, type in this new address:

http://www.homendlrn.co.uk/ME/webq2.htm

• In section 2 of the dialogue box, select "The entire page"
• In section 3 of the dialogue box, select "Full HTML formatting"
• Click the OK button
• Click OK in the next dialogue box that asks you where you want to put the data (=$A$1)
• Excel will place the data from the new web page into sheet 2 of your spreadsheet

Although the table itself might look nice and bright, that text heading looks chopped of. Your heading might look like the following one:

The reason it's chopped of is because the cells on row 1 are not formatted properly. If you highlight row 1, from A1 to G1, and then click Format > Cells from the menu bar, you can merge all those cells, and centre the text (Alignment tab strip, centre, tick box at bottom "Merge Cells".)

The image below shows a tidied up version of the downloaded spreadsheet (you can do all the cell formatting before you download):

And that's all there is to the basics of downloading data from the internet and importing it into an Excel worksheet.

In the next part, we take a look at adding hyperlinks to your spreadsheets.