excel computer course london - Consolidate

Hi Chitra, Thank you for your post, I hope you enjoyed your courses. To answer your question; Consolidating data enables you to summarise data from several ranges in a single range. To consolidate worksheet data, you specify a range in which to place the information (the destination area), and then specify the various ranges from which to consolidate data (the source areas). The source area can come from the same worksheet or workbook or from a different workbook. You can consolidate data in two ways;
1. According to its relative position; use this technique when the data to be consolidated have an identical structure such as worksheets created from the same template.
2. According to category; use this technique when source areas have similar data in different relative locations, or a different number of rows or columns in each category.
Note: it is useful to give source areas identical range names on the various source worksheets. This way, after entering the first source area reference, you can simply edit the file name in the Reference box to enter the other source areas. This is also helpful if you add to, delete from, or move the source areas. Further note: When you consolidate with links to the source data, Excel creates an outline structure for the consolidated data. I hope that helps, regards Pete.