Sorting Data from the Web

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This activity requires Office 97 or Office 2000. The following activity will show you how to copy a table of information from the web and sort it in Excel. While the example is very specific, you can use the process to capture and analyze any table of information from any web site. The Setup The SDE has placed the 1995-1999 CSAB results on its web site. Those are in alphabetic order by district. To find out where our district ranks, you can copy the SDE table and paste it into an Excel spreadsheet. After that, you can sort it by any column you want. The Hook In your Internet browser, go to http://www.state.sc.us/sde/reports/csab99/fiveyear.htm. Highlight the entire table of CSAB information by holding down the left mouse button and dragging across the table. Release the mouse button after the table is highlighted. When the complete table is highlighted, click Edit on the menu bar at the top of the browser window. Then choose Copy from the drop-down menu. The Drop Open Microsoft Excel 97 or Excel 2000. On a blank spreadsheet, click Edit and Paste. The table of information will be pasted into rows and columns. The End Game Highlight all the cells containing the data (do not include the column labels at the top of the table). Be sure to highlight (in this case, specifically) the range of cells from A-4 to G-whatever-the-last-row-is. Then click Data on the menu bar. Then select Sort from the drop-down menu. Click the option for No Header Row. Then choose the column(s) you want to sort by. For example, if you want to sort by the 1999 percent ready, choose Column F and mark it Descending. Click OK. You can sort by any column in the table or by multiple columns (up to 3).