Appending and merging data from multiple sources

At this point, we’ve seen how to extract data from a single data source, such as a PDF file or Excel workbook. In this section, I’m offering you a two-for-one, where you’ll not only learn how to extract data from text files but also how to relate data from two or more sources together. The example files for this chapter include six comma-separated value (CSV) files. Figure 12.26 shows the data contained within each file, which is also in the Chapter 12 - Appending and Merging Data.xlsx workbook. These text files are structured similar to how data is stored in database Tables.

You may not have immediate access to a database, but carrying out the steps for appending and merging data from these text files, then you’ll know exactly extract data from a database into Excel:

Figure 12.26 – Normalized data

Normalizing data means having as little redundancy as possible. In this example...