Merge all sheets in one excel

If you’re a Microsoft Excel user, it doesn’t take long before you have many different workbooks full of important spreadsheets. What happens when you need to combine these multiple workbooks together so that all of the sheets are in the same place?

Excel can be challenging at times because it’s so powerful. You know that what you want to do is possible, but you might not know how to accomplish it. In this tutorial, I’ll show you several techniques you can use to merge Excel spreadsheets.

When you need to combine multiple spreadsheets, don’t copy and paste the data from each sheet manually. There are many shortcuts that you can use to save time in combining workbooks, and I’ll show you which one is right for each situation.

Watch & Learn

The screencast below will show you how to combine Excel sheets into a single consolidated workbook. I’ll teach you to use PowerQuery (also called Get & Transform Data) to pull together data from multiple workbooks.

Important: The email addresses used in this tutorial are fictitious (randomly generated) and not intended to represent any real email addresses.

Read on to see written instructions. As always, Excel has multiple ways to accomplish this task, and how you’re working with your data will drive which approach is the best.

1. How to Move & Copy Sheets (Simplest Method)

The easiest method to merge Excel spreadsheets is to simply take the entire sheet and copy it from one workbook to another.

To do this, start off by opening both Excel workbooks. Then, switch to the workbook that you want to copy several sheets from.

Now, hold Control (or Command on Mac) on your keyboard and click on all of the sheets that you want to copy to a separate workbook. You’ll notice that as you do this, the tabs will show as highlighted.

Now, simply right click and choose Move or Copy from the menu.

On the Move or Copy pop up window, the first thing that you’ll want to do is select the workbook that you want to move the sheets to. Choose the name of the file from the «To book» drop-down.

Also, you can choose where the sheets are placed in the new workbook in terms of sequence. The Before sheet menu controls where sequentially in the workbook the sheets will be inserted. You can always choose (move to end) and re-sequence the order the sheets later as needed.

Finally, it’s optional check the box to Create a copy, which will duplicate the sheets and create a separate copy of them in the workbook you’re moving the sheets to. Once you press OK, you’ll see that the sheets we copied are in the combined workbook.

This approach has a few downsides. If you keep working with two separate files, they aren’t «in sync.» If you make changes to the original workbook that you copied the sheets from, they won’t automatically update in the combined workbook.

2. Prepare to Use Get & Transform Data Tools to Combine Sheets

Excel has an incredibly powerful set of tools that are often called PowerQuery. Beginning with Excel 2016, this feature set was rebranded as Get & Transform Data. 

As the name suggests, these are a set of tools that helps you pull data together from other workbooks and consolidate it into one workbook.

Also, this feature is exclusive to Excel for Windows. You won’t find it in the Mac versions or in the web browser edition of Microsoft’s app.

Before You Start: Check the Data

The most important part of this process is checking your data before you start combining it. The files need to have the same setup for the data structure, with the same columns. You can’t easily combine a four-column spreadsheet and a five-column spreadsheet, as Excel won’t know where to place the data.

Often, you’ll find yourself needing to combine spreadsheets when you’re downloading data from systems. In that case, it’s much easier to make sure the system you’re downloading data is configured to download data in the same columns each time.

Before I download data from a service like Google Analytics, I always make sure that I’m downloading the same report format each time. This ensures that I can easily work with and combine multiple spreadsheets together.

Whether you’re pulling data from a system like Google Analytics, MailChimp, or an ERP like SAP or Oracle that powers huge companies, the best way to save time is to ensure that you’re downloading data in a common format.

Now that we’ve checked our data, it’s time to dive into learning how to combine Excel sheets. 

3. How to Combine Excel Sheets in a Folder Full of Files

A few times, I’ve had a folder full of files that I needed to put together into a single, consolidated file. When you’ve got dozens or even hundreds of files, opening them one-by-one to combine them just isn’t feasible. Learning this technique can save you dozens of hours on a single project.

Again, it’s crucial that the data is in the same format. To get started, it helps to place all of the files in the same folder so that Excel can easily watch this folder for changes. 

Step 1. Point Excel to the Folder of Files

On the pop-up window, you’ll want to specify a path to the folder that holds your Excel workbooks.

You can browse to that path, or simply paste in the path to the folder with your workbooks.

Step 2. Confirm the List of Files

After you show Excel where the workbooks are stored, a new window will pop up that shows the list of files you’re set to combine. Right now, you’re only seeing metadata about the files, and not the data inside of it.

This window simply shows the files that are going to be combined with our query. You’ll see the file name, the type, and the dates accessed and modified. If you’re missing a file in this list, confirm that all of the files are in the folder and retry the process.

To move on to the next step, click on Edit. 

Step 3. Confirm the Combination

The next menu helps to confirm the data inside your files. Since we’ve already checked that data is the same structure in our multiple files, we can simply click OK on this step.

Step 4. How to Combine Excel Sheets With a Click

Now, a new window pops up with the list of files we’re set to combine.

At this stage, you’re still seeing metadata about the files and now the data itself. To solve that, click on the double drop-down arrow in the upper right corner of the first column.

Voila! Now, you’ll see the actual data from inside the files combined into one place. 

Scroll through the data to confirm that all of your rows are there. Notice that the only change from your original data is that the filename of each source file is in the first column.

Step 5. Close and Load the Data

Believe it or not, we’re basically finished with combining our Excel spreadsheets. The data is in the Query Editor for now, so we’ll need to «send it back» to regular Excel so that we can work with it.

Click on Close & Load in the upper right corner. You’ll see the finished data in a regular Excel spreadsheet, ready to review and work with.

Imagine using this feature to roll up multiple files from different members of your team. Choose a folder that you’ll each store files in, and then combine them into one cohesive file with this feature in just a few minutes.

Recap & Keep Learning

In this tutorial, you learned several techniques for how to combine Excel sheets. When you’ve got many sheets that you need to stitch together, using one of these approaches will save you time so that you can get back to the task at hand!

Check out some of the other tutorials to level up your Excel skills. Each of these tutorials will teach you a method for accomplishing tasks in less time in Microsoft Excel.

How do you merge Excel workbooks? Let me know in the comments section below whether you’ve got a preference for these methods, or a technique of your own that you use.

Did you find this post useful?

I believe that life is too short to do just one thing. In college, I studied Accounting and Finance but continue to scratch my creative itch with my work for Envato Tuts+ and other clients. By day, I enjoy my career in corporate finance, using data and analysis to make decisions.

I cover a variety of topics for Tuts+, including photo editing software like Adobe Lightroom, PowerPoint, Keynote, and more. What I enjoy most is teaching people to use software to solve everyday problems, excel in their career, and complete work efficiently. Feel free to reach out to me on my website.

Learn everything about how to merge sheets in Excel, plus how to combine multiple Excel files into one.

Sometimes, the Microsoft Excel data you need is split across multiple sheets or even multiple files. It can be significantly more convenient to have all of this information in the same document.

You can copy and paste the cells you need in a pinch, placing them all on the same sheet. However, depending on how much data you’re working with, this might take a lot of time and effort.

Instead, we’ve rounded up some smarter ways to accomplish the same task. These methods will allow you to quickly and easily merge sheets or files in Excel.

How to Combine Excel Sheets Into One File

If you have multiple Excel files, perhaps each containing numerous sheets, that you want to combine into a single file, you can do this with the Move or Copy Sheet command. This method of merging Excel sheets has its limitations, but it’s quick and straightforward.

First, open up the sheets you want to merge into the same workbook. From there:

1. From the top ribbon, select the Home tab.
2. Within the Cells group, click Format.
3. Select Move or Copy Sheet.

This opens the Move or Copy window. The To book dropdown lets you select the master spreadsheet where you want to send all of your individual sheets. Select (new book) to create a new file, or select an existing file. Use the Before sheet box to specify the order that the sheets are in (this will be blank if you’re using a new book). When ready, click OK.

Repeat this process for all the sheets that you wish to merge. To save time, you can select multiple sheets in a file by holding Ctrl as you click their tabs at the bottom.

Once done, save your new master document.

For the reverse of this, we’ve also covered how to split a large CSV into separate files.

How to Combine Excel Sheets Into One File With VBA

Rather than performing the above combination technique manually, the quicker way is to use a VBA macro. This will come in especially handy if you perform this task regularly.

First, make sure that all the files you want to combine are in the same folder on your computer. Then, create a new Excel spreadsheet that will bring them all together.

Head to the Developer tab. Within the Code section, select Visual Basic. Click Insert > Module.

For this process, we consulted ExtendOffice. Copy and paste the following code:

 Sub GetSheets()
Path = "C:FILE PATH"
Filename = Dir(Path & "*.xlsx")
  Do While Filename <> ""
  Workbooks.Open Filename:=Path & Filename, ReadOnly:=True
     For Each Sheet In ActiveWorkbook.Sheets
     Sheet.Copy After:=ThisWorkbook.Sheets(1)
  Next Sheet
     Workbooks(Filename).Close
     Filename = Dir()
  Loop
End Sub 

Make sure to change the path on the second line to wherever the files are stored on your computer.

Next, click the run button (or press F5) to execute the macro. This will immediately combine all the Excel sheets into your current file. Close the Visual Basic window to return to your spreadsheet and see the result. Don’t forget to save the changes.

How to Merge Excel Data Into One Sheet

Sometimes, you might want to take more than one dataset and present it as a single sheet. This is pretty easy to accomplish in Excel, so long as you take the time to ensure that your Excel data is organized and formatted properly ahead of time.

There are two important conditions for this process to work correctly. First, the sheets you’re consolidating need to use the same layout, with identical headers and data types. Second, there can’t be any blank rows or columns.

When you’ve arranged your data to those specifications, create a new worksheet. It’s possible to run the consolidation procedure in an existing sheet where there’s already data, but it’s easier not to.

1. In this new sheet, select the upper-left cell of where you want to place the consolidated data.
2. Select the Data tab.
3. Within the Data Tools section, click Consolidate.
4. On the Function dropdown, select your desired summary function. The default is Sum, which adds values together.
5. Click the up arrow button in the Reference field. If the data is in another file, use the Browse button.
   1. Highlight the range you wish to consolidate.
   2. Click Add to add the range to All references.
6. Repeat step five until you’ve selected all the data that you want to consolidate.
7. Check Create links to source data if you’re going to continue to update the data in other sheets and want this new sheet to reflect that. You can also select which labels are carried across with the Use labels in checkboxes.
8. Finally, click OK.

Take Caution Before Merging Excel Data

Merging sheets and files in Excel can be complicated and messy. This illuminates one of the most important lessons about Microsoft Excel: it’s always good to plan ahead.

Merging different data sets after the fact is always going to cause a few headaches, especially if you’re working with large spreadsheets that have been in use for a long time. When you start working with a new workbook, it’s best to consider all possibilities of how you will use the file further down the line.

I recently got a question from a reader about combining multiple worksheets in the same workbook into one single worksheet.

I asked him to use Power Query to combine different sheets, but then I realized that for someone new to Power Query, doing this can be tough.

So I decided to write this tutorial and show the exact steps to combine multiple sheets into one single table using Power Query.

Below a video where I show how to combine data from multiple sheets/tables using Power Query:

Below are written instructions on how to combine multiple sheets (in case you prefer written text over video).

Note: Power Query can be used as an add-in in Excel 2010 and 2013, and is an inbuilt feature from Excel 2016 onwards. Based on your version, some images may look different (image captures used in this tutorial are from Excel 2016).

Combine Data from Multiple Worksheets Using Power Query

When combining data from different sheets using Power Query, it’s required to have the data in an Excel Table (or at least in named ranges). If the data is not in an Excel Table, the method shown here would not work.

Suppose you have four different sheets – East, West, North, and South.

Each of these worksheets has the data in an Excel Table, and the structure of the table is consistent (i.e., the headers are same).

Click here to download the data and follow along.

This kind of data is extremely easy to combine using Power Query (which works really well with data in Excel Table).

For this technique to work best, it’s better to have names for your Excel Tables (work without it too, but it’s easier to use when the tables are named).

I have given the tables the following names: East_Data, West_Data, North_Data, and South_Data.

Here are the steps to combine multiple worksheets with Excel Tables using Power Query:

1. Go to the Data tab.
2. In the Get & Transform Data group, click on the ‘Get Data’ option.
3. Go the ‘From Other Sources’ option.
4. Click the ‘Blank Query’ option. This will open the Power Query editor.
5. In the Query editor, type the following formula in the formula bar: =Excel.CurrentWorkbook(). Note that the Power Query formulas are case sensitive, so you need to use the exact formula as mentioned (else you will get an error). 
6. Hit the Enter key. This will show you all the table names in the entire workbook (it will also show you the named ranges and/or connections in case it exists in the workbook).
7. [Optional Step] In this example, I want to combine all the tables. If you want to combine specific Excel Tables only, then you can click the drop-down icon in the name header and select the ones you want to combine. Similarly, if you have named ranges or connections, and you only want to combine tables, you can remove those named ranges as well.
8. In the Content header cell, click on the double pointed arrow.
9. Select the columns that you want to combine. If you want to combine all columns, make sure (Select All Columns) is checked.
10. Uncheck the ‘Use original column name as prefix’ option.
11. Click OK.

The above steps would combine the data from all the worksheets into one single table.

If you look closely, you’ll find the last column (rightmost) has the name of the Excel tables (East_Data, West_Data, North_Data, and South_Data). This is an identifier that tells us which record came from which Excel Table. This is also the reason I said it’s better to have descriptive names for the Excel tables.

Here are a few modifications you can do to the combined data in Power Query itself:

1. Drag and place the Name column to the beginning.
2. Remove the “_Data” from the name column (so you’re left with East, West, North, and South in the name column). To do this, right-click on the Name header and click on Replace Values. In the  Replace Values dialog box, replace _Data with a blank.
3. Change the Data column to show only dates (and not the time). To do this, click the Date column header, go to the ‘Transform’ tab and change the Data type to Date.
4. Rename the Query to ConsolidatedData.

Now that you have the combined data from all the worksheets in Power Query, you can load it in Excel – as a new table in a new worksheet.

To do this. follow the below steps:

1. Click the ‘File’ tab.
2. Click on Close and Load To.
3. In the Import Data dialog box, select Table and New worksheet options.
4. Click Ok.

The above steps would combine data from all the worksheets and give you that combined data in a new worksheet.

One Issue You Must Resolve when Using This Method

In case you have used the above method to combine all the tables in the workbook, you’re likely to face an issue.

See the number of rows of the combined data – 1304 (which is right).

Now, if I refresh the query, the number of rows changes to 2607. Refresh again and it will change to 3910.

Here is the problem.

Every time you refresh the query, it adds all the records in the original data to the combined data.

Note: You’ll face this issue only if you have used Power Query to combine ALL THE EXCEL TABLES in the workbook. In case you selected specific tables to be combined, you’ll not face this issue.

Let’s understand the cause of this problem and how to correct this.

When you refresh a query, it goes back and follows all the steps that we took to combine the data.

In the step where we used the formula =Excel.CurrentWorkbook(), it gave us a list of all the tables. This worked fine the first time as there were only four tables.

But when you refresh, there are five tables in the workbook – including the new table that Power Query inserted where we have the combined data.

So every time you refresh the query, apart from the four Excel Tables that we want to combine, it also adds the existing query table to the resulting data.

This is called recursion.

Here is how to solve this issue.

Once you insert =Excel.CurrentWorkbook() in the  Power Query formula bar and hit enter, you get a list of Excel Tables. To make sure you only get to combine the tables from the worksheet, you need to somehow filter only these tables that you want to combine and remove everything else.

Here are the steps to make sure you only have the required tables:

1. Click the drop-down and hover the cursor on Text Filters.
2. Click on the Contains option.
3. In the Filter Rows dialog box, enter _Data in the field next to the ‘contains’ option.
4. Click OK.

You may not see any change in the data, but doing this will prevent the resulting table from being added over again when the query is refreshed.

Note that in the above steps we have used “_Data” to filter as we named out tables that way. But what if your tables are not named consistently. What if all the table names are random and have nothing in common.

Here is the way to solve this – use the ‘does not equal’ filter and enter the name of the Query (which would be ConsolidatedData in our example). This will ensure that everything remains the same and the resulting query table which is created is filtered out.

Apart from the fact that Power Query makes this entire process of combining data from different sheets (or even the same sheet) quite easy, another benefit of using it that it makes it dynamic. If you add more records to any of the tables and refresh the Power Query, it will automatically give you the combined data.

Important Note: In the example used in this tutorial, the headers were same. In case the headers are different, Power Query will combine and create all the columns in the new table. If the data is available for that column, it will be shown, else it will show null.

You May Also Like the Following Power Query Tutorials:

• Combine Data from Multiple Workbooks in Excel (using Power Query).
• How to Unpivot Data in Excel using Power Query (aka Get & Transform)
• Get a List of File Names from Folders & Sub-folders (using Power Query)
• Merge Tables in Excel Using Power Query.
• How to Compare Two Excel Sheets/Files
• How to Switch Between Sheets in Excel? (7 Better Ways)