When preparing a report for professional or academic purposes that involves details on various nations, entering data manually in Microsoft Excel can be time-consuming. A more efficient approach involves leveraging Excel's data types feature to retrieve necessary information quickly. This guide explains the process.
Suppose your spreadsheet requires details on Italy, France, and England. Gathering facts such as population figures, birth rates, and similar metrics might otherwise involve online searches followed by manual input into the cells.
A quicker method starts by selecting the cell containing the country name, then navigating to the Data tab in Excel's menu bar. From there, opt for the Geography data type. This action adds an icon beside the country name in the cell and generates an adjacent pop-up menu. Clicking this menu reveals choices for extracting specific data about the country, allowing you to insert the desired details (as illustrated below).
This simple process completes the task. For additional productivity advice, consider signing up for updates from PCWorld's Try This section.
Dominic Bayley, an avid technology follower based in Australia, contributes to PCWorld with a specialization in PC gaming components, including laptops, mice, headsets, and keyboards.