Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, and 2013. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Understanding Lists.
Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated November 10, 2021)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, and 2013
In Excel, a database is most often referred to as a list. A list is nothing more than a data table that contains organized information. For instance, a list can contain information about your receivables, your coin collection, or the test results for students in your class.
Lists, or databases, are comprised of records (for instance, each row could be the record for one student) and fields (here, each column is the data from one category). Normally you place labels at the top of the list to indicate the field names, therefore each column represents a field. Each row in the list is a database record.
There are a few guidelines you might find helpful as you are developing lists. Remember that these guidelines only apply if you will be using the database-related functions built into Excel.
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (949) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, and 2013. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Understanding Lists.
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2018-03-08 14:26:06
Mandora
I think Bryan is splitting hairs. While in the world of relational databases a database is a single or a collection of lists, in the non-relational Excel environment a contiguous collection of information organized in tabular form was first referred to as a "list". Later an enhancement of list functions was introduced as "table" with both list and table functionality supported. In the Excel environment the generic term "database" covers both "list" and/or "table" and visa-versa.
2013-10-07 08:34:43
Bryan
"In Excel, a database is most often referred to as a list."
What? Not since XL2007 came out ~7 years ago. The "lists" feature from 2003 got renamed to "tables". Besides, even if people did use to use the term "list" (which I doubt), a database would be a *collection* of lists, so the two terms wouldn't have been used synonymously.
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Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, and 2013. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here:
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