Using Microsoft Office for Mac as a Relational Database

By Jim Gordon, co-author of Office 2011 for Mac All-in-One For Dummies.

Part 4 - Database Tables

When you use an Excel workbook as your data source, you store your data in row and column tables. A workbook is the container for all the tables in your database. Each worksheet in a workbook is a table in your database. Make sure your data tables follow these important rules:

Start your data table in cell A1
Row 1, and only row 1 contains field names (also known as "column headers" or simply "headers"). No exceptions! The first column usually contains unique data for each record that can be ordered (also known an index). Account numbers and person numbers are a typical of this kind of data. The first empty row or column designates the end of the table. Rows and/or columns placed after an empty row or column are ignored and will not be returned in a query result.

Each worksheet is a table

Put only one table on each worksheet in a database workbook.

A table's name is the name of the worksheet
Use short, descriptive, unique names for table and field names. Avoid reserved words. Avoid special characters.

Merged cells are not allowed anywhere in a data table
This rule includes the header row.

Part 1

Part 3 (Previous)

Part 5 (Next)