Merge two excel files

Accessing data from multiple Excel files can be time-consuming and hard.

You often have to switch between multiple open windows, it’s messy and you feel like there’s data all over the place.

So, when you have to access data that is spread out over multiple Excel files, it makes sense to merge the sheets from all these files into one single Excel workbook.

This keeps your data organized and saves a lot of referencing time.

In this tutorial, we show you three ways to merge two Excel files:

• Using the Move or Copy feature
• Using VBA
• Using Get & Transform tools

Imagine you have two separate files:

• File1
• File2

These two files contain order-related information (for an imaginary company).

File1 has 2 tabs (named Apr-Jun 2021 and Jul-Sep 2021) and File2 has a single tab (named Jan-Mar 2021).

Let’s say you want to merge File1 and File2 by bringing both sheets of File1 into File2.

As mentioned before, there are 3 ways to do this. The method you choose will depend on your requirement and how your data is structured.

Let us look at each method one by one.

Using the Move or Copy Feature to Merge Two Excel Files

This is the simplest and the most commonly used method to merge two Excel Files.

This method is suited in situations where you have to merge two or more Excel files that have only a few sheets, and you need to do it only once in a while.

Below are the merge two Excel files manually:

1. Select all the tabs that you want to move or copy from File1. Since we want to move all the sheets from File1, we simply select the first tab, hold down the shift key and select the last tab.
2. Right-click on your selected tabs and click on ‘Move or Copy’ from the context menu that appears.

1. This opens the ‘Move or Copy’ dialog box.

1. Click on the dropdown under ‘To book:’.
2. From here, you can select the file (or workbook) to which you want to move or copy the selected sheet(s). Since we want to transfer the sheet to File2, we can select the File2.xlsx option from this list.

1. You should now see the different move or copy options available in the list under ‘Before Sheet:’. Select where in File2 you want the sheet moved. Since Apr-Jun 2021 comes after Jan-Feb 2021, it makes sense to place it at the end (as the last sheet of File2). So select (move to end)

1. If you want to retain a copy of the sheets in File1, then check the box next to ‘Create a copy’.

1. Click OK.

All sheets of File1 should now get copied to File2, so that it now contains 3 sheets in all.

Note that for this method to work, you need to have both the files open (one from which you want to copy the sheets and the one where you want to copy these sheets).

Also, note that this method will create a copy of sheets in File1 and add these to File2. These sheets will still remain in File1.

As I mentioned, this method is fine if you want to do this once in a while with files that have less number of sheets. If you have more sheets, there is always a chance of human error. In such cases, you can use the VBA or the Power Query method covered next.

In case you have more than two Excel files that you want to merge, you can follow the same process, where you combine two Excel files, and then combine the third/fourth file with it.

Using VBA to Merge Two Excel Files

The second method to merge two Excel files uses the following VBA script:

'Code by Steve Scott from https://spreadsheetplanet.com
Sub MergeSheets()
Dim SourceWb As Workbook
Dim TargetWb As Workbook
Set SourceWb = Workbooks("File1")
Set TargetWb = Workbooks("File2")
Dim SourceSheet As Worksheet
For Each SourceSheet In SourceWb.Sheets
SourceSheet.Copy After:=TargetWb.Sheets(TargetWb.Sheets.Count)
Next
End Sub

The above script simply takes two files, “File1” and “File2“, cycles through each sheet of File1 and appends a copy of it to File2.

All you need to do is replace the filenames “File1” and “File2” in the above code with your required source and target files.

For this code to work, your Excel files need to be open. In case you want the code to open a closed file, copy sheets from one file to another, and then close the files again, you can do that too (you will need to modify the code to do that).

Note: This script copies the “File1” sheets and pastes them into “File2”. This means the original sheets within “File1” remain as they were.

To run the above script, follow the steps below:

1. Make sure both files that you want to merge are open.
2. Navigate to Developer->Visual Basic.

1. When the Visual Basic window opens, click Insert->Module.

1. Copy and paste the above code into the newly opened window.

1. Edit the code according to your requirement. For example, change the filenames in lines 4 and 5, or make other changes if you need to.
2. Run the code by clicking on the Run button, as shown below:

That’s it!

You should now find the sheets of File1 and File2 merged into File2, while retaining a copy of the original sheets in File1 too.

Note: If you cannot find the Developer menu option, navigate to File->Options->Customize Ribbon and check the Developer option. Click OK.

Using Get & Transform Tools (Power Query) to Merge Two Excel Files

If you’re using Excel 2016 or newer versions, you can also use the Get & Transform tool to merge two or more Excel files.

The Get & Transform tool is a Power Query feature that allows you to import data from multiple sources quickly and easily.

The great thing is that you can use it to make changes to your source data as required before importing it to the new workbook.

Here are the steps that you need to follow in order to merge two Excel Files using the Get & Transform tool:

1. Open File2
2. From the Data tab, select New Query (from the Get & Transform group).

1. Select From File -> From Workbook from the dropdown list that appears.

1. This opens the Import Data window, from where you can select the workbook from which you want to import the sheets. Select File1 and click Import.

1. This opens the Navigator window, where you can see a list of all the sheets and tables from File1.

1. Since we want to import more than one sheet, check the box next to ‘Select multiple items’.

1. Check the boxes next to the sheets you want to import. In our case, we select both.

1. Click on the dropdown arrow next to ‘Load’ at the bottom of the window.
2. Select ‘Load to’.

1. From the Load To window, check the radio button next to ‘Table’ and click ‘Load’.

1. Wait for the query to complete processing.

You should now see two new sheets in File2. 

Notice that the names of the sheets are just the generic Sheet1 and Sheet2, so you’ll have to double click on each tab and change the sheet names (if you need to).

That’s it! You have now merged File1 into File2, which now contains all 3 sheets!

Also, notice that the data in the newly imported sheets are in the form of an Excel table. If you don’t want that, you could simply convert them back to ranges by navigating to Table Design->Convert to Range.

When you are asked to confirm, simply click OK.

In this tutorial, we showed you 3 ways to merge two files in Excel.

The first two methods (using Move or Copy and using VBA) are more commonly used since they have been around for a while.

The last method (using Get & Transform) is the lesser-used method since it is fairly new and only available in newer Excel versions.

However, Power Query is increasingly becoming the go-to tool for businesses and other industries, so it makes sense to learn how to bring together data from multiple sources into the framework, to facilitate further processing.

Other articles you may also like:

• How to Convert a CSV File to Excel?
• How to Convert a Text File to Excel?
• How to Make Excel File Read Only
• How to Insert an Excel file into MS Word
• How to Unmerge All Cells in Excel?
• How to Copy Multiple Sheets to a New Workbook in Excel
• How to Group and Ungroup Worksheets in Excel
• How to Open Excel File [xls, xlsx] Online (for FREE)
• Microsoft Excel vs Google Sheets – Which One Is Better for You?
• Switch Between Excel Workbooks (Shortcut)
• How to Combine Two Columns in Excel (with Space/Comma)

You have several Excel workbooks and you want to merge them into one file? This could be a troublesome and long process. But there are 6 different methods of how to merge existing workbooks and worksheets into one file. Depending on the size and number of workbooks, at least one of these methods should be helpful for you. Let’s take a look at them.

Summary

If you want to merge just a small amount of files, go with methods 1 or method 2 below. For anything else, please take a look at the methods 4 to 6: Either use a VBA macro, conveniently use an Excel-add-in or use PowerQuery (PowerQuery only possible if the sheets to merge have exactly the same structure).

Method 1: Copy the cell ranges

The obvious method: Select the source cell range, copy and paste them into your main workbook. The disadvantage: This method is very troublesome if you have to deal with several worksheets or cell ranges. On the other hand: For just a few ranges it’s probably the fastest way.

Method 2: Manually copy worksheets

The next method is to copy or move one or several Excel sheets manually to another file. Therefore, open both Excel workbooks: The file containing the worksheets which you want to merge (the source workbook) and the new one, which should comprise all the worksheets from the separate files.

1. Select the worksheets in your source workbooks which you want to copy. If there are several sheets within one file, hold the Ctrl key and click on each sheet tab. Alternatively, go to the first worksheet you want to copy, hold the Shift key  and click on the last worksheet. That way, all worksheets in between will be selected as well.
2. Once all worksheets are selected, right click on any of the selected worksheets.
3. Click on “Move or Copy”.
4. Select the target workbook.
5. Set the tick at “Create a copy”. That way, the original worksheets remain in the original workbook and a copy will be created.
6. Confirm with OK.

One small tip at this point: You can just drag and drop worksheets from one to another Excel file. Even better: If you press and hold the Ctrl-Key when you drag and drop the worksheets, you create copies.

Method 3: Use the INDIRECT formula

The next method comes with some disadvantages and is a little bit more complicated. It works, if your files are in a systematic file order and just want to import some certain values. You build your file and cell reference with the INDIRECT formula. That way, the original files remain and the INDIRECT formula only looks up the values within these files. If you delete the files, you’ll receive #REF! errors.

Let’s take a closer look at how to build the formula. The INDIRECT formula has only one argument: The link to another cell which can also be located within another workbook.

1. Copy the first source cell.
2. Paste it into your main file using paste special (Ctrl + Alt + v ). Instead of pasting it normally, click on “Link” in the bottom left corner of the Paste Special window. That way, you extract the complete path. In our case, we have the following link:
   =[160615_Examples.xlsm]Thousands!$C$4
3. Now we wrap the INDIRECT formula around this path. Furthermore, we separate it into file name, sheet name and cell reference. That way, we can later on just change one of these references, for instance for different versions of the same file. The complete formula looks like this (please also see the image above):
   =INDIRECT(“‘”&$A3&$B3&”‘!”&D$2&$C3)

Important – please note: This function only works if the source workbooks are open.

Method 4: Merge files with a simple VBA macro

You are not afraid of using a simple VBA macro? Then let’s insert a new VBA module:

1. Go to the Developer ribbon. If you can’t see the Developer ribbon, right click on any ribbon and then click on “Customize the Ribbon…”. On the right hand side, set the tick at “Developer”.
2. Click on Visual Basic on the left side of the Developer ribbon.
3. Right click on your workbook name and click on Insert –> Module.
4. Copy and paste the following code into the new VBA module. Position the cursor within the code and click start (the green triangle) on the top. That’s it!

Sub mergeFiles()
    'Merges all files in a folder to a main file.
    
    'Define variables:
    Dim numberOfFilesChosen, i As Integer
    Dim tempFileDialog As fileDialog
    Dim mainWorkbook, sourceWorkbook As Workbook
    Dim tempWorkSheet As Worksheet
    
    Set mainWorkbook = Application.ActiveWorkbook
    Set tempFileDialog = Application.fileDialog(msoFileDialogFilePicker)
    
    'Allow the user to select multiple workbooks
    tempFileDialog.AllowMultiSelect = True
    
    numberOfFilesChosen = tempFileDialog.Show
    
    'Loop through all selected workbooks
    For i = 1 To tempFileDialog.SelectedItems.Count
        
        'Open each workbook
        Workbooks.Open tempFileDialog.SelectedItems(i)
        
        Set sourceWorkbook = ActiveWorkbook
        
        'Copy each worksheet to the end of the main workbook
        For Each tempWorkSheet In sourceWorkbook.Worksheets
            tempWorkSheet.Copy after:=mainWorkbook.Sheets(mainWorkbook.Worksheets.Count)
        Next tempWorkSheet
        
        'Close the source workbook
        sourceWorkbook.Close
    Next i
    
End Sub

Method 5: Automatically merge workbooks

The fifth way is probably most convenient:

Click on “Merge Files” on the Professor Excel ribbon.

Now select all the files and worksheets you want to merge and start with “OK”.

This procedure works well also for many files at the same time and is self-explanatory. Even better: Besides XLSX files, you can also combine XLS, XLSB, XLSM, CSV, TXT and ODS files.

To do that you need a third party add-in, for example our popular “Professor Excel Tools” (click here to start the download).

Here is the whole process in detail:

Method 6: Use the Get & Transform tools (PowerQuery)

The current version of Excel 365 offers the “Get & Transform” tools to import data. These functions are very powerful and are supposed to replace the old “Text Import Wizard”. However, they have one useful feature: Import a complete folder of documents.

The requirements: The workbooks and worksheets you want to import have to be in the same format.

Please follow these steps for importing a complete folder of Excel files.

1. Create a folder with all the documents you want to import.
2. Usually it’s the fastest to just copy the folder path directly from the Windows Explorer. You still have the change to later-on select the folder, though.
3. Within Excel, go to the Data ribbon and click on “Get Data”, “From File” and then on “From Folder”.
4. Paste the previously copied path or select it via the “Browse” function. Continue with “OK”.
5. If all files are shown in the following window, either click on “Combine” (and then on “Combine & Load To”) or on “Edit”. If you click on “Edit”, you can still filter the list and only import a selection of the files in the list. Recommendation: Put only the necessary files into your import folder from the beginning so that you don’t have to navigate through the complex “Edit” process.
6. Next, Excel shows an example of the data based on the first file. If everything seems fine, click on OK. If your files have several sheets, just select the one you want to import, in this example “Sheet1”. Click on “OK”.
7. That’s it, Excel now imports the data and inserts a new column containing the file name.

For more information about the Get & Transform tools please refer to this article.

Next step: Merge multiple worksheets to one combined sheet

After you have combined many Excel workbooks into one file, usually the next step is this: Merge all the imported sheets into one worksheet.

Because this is a whole different topic by itself, please refer to this article.

Image by MartinHolzer from Pixabay

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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.

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