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Excel

One of the most powerful ways to work with data on data.world is to do it without ever leaving your favorite application. There are already many applications which have data.world integrations built for them, and more are constantly being added. For a comprehensive list of the current integrations available see our Integrations page. This article covers using our integration for one of the most common data analysis tools: Microsoft Excel. This article was written on a Mac using Microsoft Excel 2016 Desktop for Mac so the screens shown may vary from yours if you are using Excel for Windows.

Installing the data.world add-in to Excel

To start using Excel with data.world you need to install the add-in in Excel, and then enable the integration in data.world. You can get the add-in on the Microsoft app store page. On the App store page, enter data.world into the search bar and click Add:

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Once the add-in is installed you'll have three new items on the right side of the home tab on your Excel menu bar:

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When you have the add-in installed, go to the Excel integration page on data.world and select Enable integration:

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Authentication

To use Excel with data.world you'll need to either sign-in to your data.world account or get an access code/API token from within data.world. Here are instructions for both.*

To use your data.world account, select one of the data.world icons from the top right of your Excel screen. When the login page appears, select Sign In, and enter your data.world credentials. To use the access code or an API token, select access code on the login page:

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You can get an access code from the Excel integration page under the Manage tab by selecting Get token:

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Copy the token and paste it into the window linked from access code on the login page.

Uploading Data From Excel to data.world

To upload data from Excel to data.world, select the Sync Data button on the right side of the Home tab of the Excel menu bar. You can either upload a selection from the current sheet or the entire current sheet. Because the worksheets in an Excel file are stored as individual files on data.world, if your Excel file has multiple worksheets you will need to upload them one at a time:

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When you upload directly from Excel you have the option to add the file to a new dataset, to an existing dataset, or to an existing project:

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Note: If you choose to add the spreadsheet to a project it will not be available for use in any other projects or datasets.

If you upload to a new dataset you'll also be prompted to set the permissions for it. The options are private and public--you cannot set permissions at the organization level from within Excel. However you can adjust permissions to the dataset from within data.world after the dataset has been created:

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Updating data.world data from within Excel

After you have uploaded a spreadsheet to data.world you can continue to work on it in Excel and then sync your changes when you're done. To update an existing dataset select Sync data, and click the upload button to the right of the dataset name:

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Importing data from data.world into Excel

If you're working in Excel and you want to import a file from data.world into your current workbook, select Import data from the Excel menu bar and choose either a new dataset or one you have previously worked with in Excel:

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If you choose to import a new item you'll be prompted to choose the source dataset or project from all of the datasets and projects you explicitly have permissions to (you do not get a list of all the datasets and projects on data.world--just the ones you own, that are owned by an organization you are in, or which have been shared with you). Next you choose whether to import a query or a table (a table is any tabular file in the dataset or project you chose), and if you want to import it to a new tab in your workbook or to the current sheet:

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Note: if you import into the current sheet, all the data in the sheet will be overwritten.

After working with the data in Excel you can sync it back up to data.world.

Publishing insights from Excel to data.world

While data.world has a a built-in Chart builder application and an integration with Tableau, if you prefer to work on your visual data analysis in Excel you can still upload your charts as insights to projects on data.world. To upload a chart from Excel choose the Publish insights menu item and select your chart:

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You'll be prompted to select an existing project or to create a new one, and if you choose New project you'll set the permissions for it to public or private. After uploading, your chart is available on the insights tab of the project along with any comments you added:

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*The only time it matters which you use is if your organization uses SAML for authentication. SAML users must use the access code/API token.