Understanding the Key Concepts of Excel Workbook, Worksheet, Table, and More

The original title: 'Understanding These 4 Tables is More Useful than Learning 100 Excel Skills!'

Hey everyone! I'm Satellite Sauce!

After sharing Excel knowledge for so long, from functions to charts, from techniques to thinking...

I suddenly found that many friends still don't understand the concept of the 'table'!

Copying ['Worksheet 1'], or ['Copy Table 1']; Selecting the amount column in the ['Source Data Table']...

These seemingly simple instructions, which part in Excel do they refer to exactly?

If you don't understand these, even after reading the tutorials, you will still be confused. To use Excel to improve efficiency, you have to lay a good foundation first~

1. Workbook

When creating a new Excel file, this entire file is called a 'workbook'.

It contains one or more worksheets↓

2. Worksheet

And the 'worksheet', as shown above, is the 'Sheet' in the workbook.

Click the plus sign to create a new worksheet:

To copy a worksheet, just put the mouse on the 'Sheet', right-click, and select ['Move or Copy'].

Check ['Make a Copy'] and then click ['OK'].

Usually when we use functions like Vlookup, the 'table' in 'cross-table reference' also refers to the worksheet.

Of course, in some cases, it can also be 'cross-workbook reference', and then it represents the reference between two Excel files~

3. Table

As for the 'table', it is not a fixed part in the Excel program, but a general term for the data area we write down.

For example, I made two tables:

They can be called 'Table 1' and 'Table 2' by me.

If another person looks at this file and calls them 'Table A' and 'Table B', it's also completely fine~

But in actual work, Worksheet 1 (Sheet1) and Table 1 (Table1) can both be abbreviated as 'Table 1', which needs to be distinguished separately.

4. Source Data Table

Although this table name is long, it is actually still one of the 'tables'.

Calling a table the 'Source Data Table' is not much different from naming it 'Table 1'.

Why do we give it this name? Isn't it troublesome?

In fact, this is to distinguish the function of the table.

The 'Source Data Table', can also be called 'Source Data', 'Data Source'.

It refers to the kind of table in the tables we make where the content is the 'source data', that is, the area that is processed in our various references, calculations, and organization.

For example, in the application of the Vlookup function, the lookup area (tablearray) is the source data of this lookup, and the table (Table) containing this area is called the 'Source Data Table'.

5. At the End

Okay, that's all for today's introduction about the 'table'~

Can friends now distinguish the workbook, worksheet, table, and Source Data Table?

Before mastering more efficient skills, learning these basic concepts can help us better understand and utilize this skill of Excel, so as to truly achieve the purpose of improving work efficiency.

This article comes from the WeChat public account: Qiuye Excel (ID: excel100), author: Satellite Sauce