Microsoft Excel is one of the most established spreadsheet programs on the market. A common task that arises is creating a table in Excel in order to manage and analyze related information. Once a table is created, the information can be sorted, filtered, or queried to identify trends and create graphical representations between variables.

How to Make a Table in Excel

Step 1 – Double click the Microsoft Excel program icon on the computer desktop or choose the shortcut from the computer’s “Program Files” menu to open Microsoft Excel.

Step 2 – Select “File” and “New” spreadsheet from the “File” menu. Depending on the Excel version that is on the computer, the specific menu option to open a new document may vary slightly.
Step 3 – Select the top-left blank cell on the spreadsheet and enter the column heading. Column headings serve as data labels such as the “First Name,” “Company,” or “Date” for data entry. These entries are also referred to as field names. All column headings are entered on the same row in the table with no blank cells between the entries. Continue to enter column headings until all data labels are entered on the spreadsheet.

Step 4 – Input the first row of data beneath the column headings entered in step three. This information consists of all of the information required for the first record of the table.

Step 5 – Select the “Table Command” button under the “Insert” and “Tables group” menu tabs. A marquee will be displayed around the cells in the new table and the “Create Table” dialog box that lists the table address will appear.

Step 6 – Choose the “My Table Has Headers” check-box that will select the row headers entered in the previous step.

Step 7 – Click the “Ok” menu button and Microsoft Excel will add filter arrows at the top of the field names in the upper row of the table.

Step 8 – Choose the “File” and “Save As” menu options and enter a file name for the new MS Excel table.

Step 9 – Enter additional data records in the Excel table.

Step 10 – When finished with data entry, select the “File” and “Save” menu options to complete creating an MS Excel table.