Get data from a folder

The 2025 expense data lives in 12 separate files, one file per month. You don’t need to open them one by one and copy-paste: just point to the folder and Excel collects everything. In this lesson you open your working file, then call the Data Expense 2025 folder with From Folder.

1234 Zoom

Click a number on the picture or in this list to highlight that area.

1. 1Data tab Home of all the data-fetching tools. Its buttons sit in the Get & Transform Data group on the left.
2. 2Get Data The leftmost button on the Data tab. Click it to open the list of data source types.
3. 3From File Sources that are files on your computer. Hover here to open its submenu.
4. 4From Folder Takes every file in one folder at once. Its tooltip reads: *Import metadata and links about files in a folder.*

Step by step

1. 1

   Step 1: Open Latihan Dashboard Expense - KOSONGAN.xlsx in the D:\Excel Dashboard folder (if it isn’t open yet). This module and all the following ones are done in this file.

   Tip: Want a clean backup so you can start over later? Copy this file in File Explorer: click the file once, press Ctrl + C, then Ctrl + V. Just leave the copy (Latihan Dashboard Expense - KOSONGAN - Copy.xlsx) alone; you keep working in the original.

   Watch out: Don’t save or copy any file into the Data Expense 2025 folder. Every file in that folder gets combined, so an extra file would be read as a 13th file.

2. 2

   Step 2: Click the Data tab on the ribbon (number 1 in the picture).

3. 3

   Step 3: Click Get Data (number 2), the leftmost button in the Get & Transform Data group.

   Tip: In the first release of Excel 2016 the path is slightly different: Data → New Query → From File → From Folder.

   Watch out: No Get Data button (and no New Query either)? Make sure you are using desktop Excel for Windows, version 2016 or later (Microsoft 365 recommended). Excel for the web, Excel Starter and Excel for Mac are not enough for this course.

4. 4

   Step 4: Hover over From File (number 3), then click From Folder (number 4) in the submenu that appears.

   Watch out: Don’t pick From Excel Workbook. That option takes only one file, and we need all 12 at once.

5. 5

   Step 5: In the Browse window, go to D:\Excel Dashboard, click the Data Expense 2025 folder once to select it, then click Open.

   Tip: Is your practice folder somewhere else, e.g. Documents? No problem, as long as you pick the Data Expense 2025 folder itself.

   Watch out: Pick the folder. Don’t go inside it and choose one of the expense files.