Understanding Tables (Lists) and Databases

Databases are organized collections of information. In that sense, practically every list of data you’ve ever used has been a database.

Defining databases and tables

Databases and tables are the same thing in Excel. Although Microsoft defines a table in Excel as “a series of rows and columns that contains related data,” that’s a pretty good thumbnail description of a basic database, and many worksheets that people create fit that definition.

Previous versions of Excel called a database on a worksheet a list. Excel 2007 now uses the term table, and you can designate any range on a worksheet as a table. After you do so, you will be able to take advantage of tools for quickly sorting, filling, using formulas, and so on in the table.

Records and fields

Although you’re used to thinking in terms of rows and columns in Excel worksheets, when you’re using Excel to track lists of information as in a database program, the proper database parlance is to call the rows “records” and the columns “fields.” Thus, every database record (a row of cells) is composed of the data in each cell in that row (the individual field entries).

Whereas a row (or “record”) can contain many types of data, the data that goes into a particular column (or “field”) is always the same kind. For instance, you might have a database that consists of annual mean temperatures for a range of years. The first column would be the year, the second the mean temperature for a city, the third the temperature for another city, and so on. For the database to make sense, in each row the year would always have to be entered in the first column. If you entered it in the third column, it would be impossible for you to properly utilize the information because the database would be looking for a temperature and find the year instead.