by Svetlana Cheusheva, updated on
3 quick ways to convert multiple CSV files to Excel turning each file into a separate spreadsheet or combining all data in a single sheet.
If you often export files in the CSV format from different applications, you may end up having a bunch of individual files relating to the same subject matter. Surely, Excel can open several files at once, but as separate workbooks. The question is - is there a simple way to convert multiple .csv files into a single workbook? Sure thing. There are even three such ways :)
To swiftly merge several csv files into one, you can make use of the Windows Command Prompt tool. Here's how:
On Windows 10 and higher, the Copy path button is also available on File Explorer's Home tab.
Alternatively, you can drag and drop the folder directly from File Explorer into the Command Prompt window.
Once you do that, the folder path will appear in the command line, reflecting the change of the active directory.
In the above command, merged-csv-files.csv is the name for the resulting file, feel free to change it to whatever name you like.
If all goes well, the names of the copied files will appear below the executed command:
Now, you can close the Command Prompt window and go back to the folder containing the original files. In there, you will find a new file named merged-csv-files.csv, or whatever name you specified in step 6.
Tips and notes:
Power Query is one of the most powerful tools in Excel 365 - Excel 2016. Among other things, it can join and transform data from different sources - an exciting feature that we are going to exploit in this example.
To combine multiple csv files into one Excel workbook, these are the steps you need to follow:
Now, let's briefly discuss the key points in each scenario.
In a simplest case when no adjustments in the original csv files are needed, choose either Combine & Load or Combine & Load To… .
Essentially, these two options do the same thing - import data from individual files into one worksheet. The former loads the results into a new sheet, while latter lets you decide where to load them.
In the preview dialog box, you can only decide on:
Once you've made your choices (in most cases, the defaults work just fine), click OK.
If you’ve chosen Combine & Load, the data will be imported in a new worksheet as a table.
In case of Combine & Load To…, the following dialog box will appear asking you to specify where and the data should be imported:
With the default settings shown in the image above, the data from multiple csv files will be imported in the table format like this one:
The Combine & Transform Data option will get your data loaded in the Power Query Editor. Features are numerous here, so let us bring into focus the ones that are especially useful for handling information from different sources.
If the source folder contains more files than you really want to merge, or some files are not .csv, open the filter of the Source.Name column and unselect irrelevant ones.
Normally, Excel determines data types for all columns automatically. In some cases, however, the defaults may not be right for you. To change data format for a particular column, select that column by clicking its header, and then click Data Type in the Transform group.
For example:
To get rid of duplicate entries, select the key column (unique identifier) that should contain only unique values, and then click Remove Rows > Remove Duplicates.
For more helpful features, explore the ribbon!
When you are done editing, get the data loaded into Excel. For this, on the Home tab, in the Close group, click Close & Load, and then hit either:
Tips and notes:
In the previous two examples, we were merging individual csv files into one. Now, let's look at how you can import each CSV as a separate sheet of a single workbook. To accomplish this, we'll be using the Copy Sheets tool included in our Ultimate Suite for Excel.
Importing will take you 3 minutes at the most, a minute per step :)
A couple of seconds later, you'll find the selected csv files converted into separate sheets of one Excel workbook. Fast and painless!
That's how to convert multiple CSV to Excel. Thank you for reading and see you next week!
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