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.