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How to Export Data from One Excel Sheet to Another

Cody Schneider•

Moving data from one Excel sheet to another is a task you'll face constantly, whether you're consolidating monthly sales figures, creating a summary dashboard, or just organizing your work. This guide walks you through several methods for exporting data between sheets, starting with the simplest copy-and-paste and moving to more dynamic and automated techniques.

The Easiest Method: Simple Copy and Paste

The most straightforward way to move data is the classic copy and paste. It's quick, easy, and perfect for one-off tasks where you don't need the data to update automatically.

Here’s how to do it:

  1. Navigate to your source sheet and select the cells containing the data you want to export. You can click and drag, or use keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl + A to select the entire data region.

  2. Copy the selected data using the shortcut Ctrl + C (or Command + C on Mac).

  3. Switch to your destination sheet and click on the cell where you want the top-left corner of your data to appear.

  4. Paste the data using the shortcut Ctrl + V (or Command + V on Mac).

While simple, standard pasting brings everything - values, formulas, formatting, and all. Sometimes, that’s not what you need. This is where Paste Special comes in.

Level Up with Paste Special

Paste Special gives you precise control over what elements of the copied cells you bring over. After copying your data (Ctrl + C), right-click the destination cell and look for "Paste Special." Here are a few of the most useful options:

  • Values (V): This is a superstar. It pastes only the calculated results of your formulas, not the formulas themselves. This is perfect for when you want to "freeze" a snapshot of your data without the risk of formulas breaking or changing later.

  • Formulas (F): The opposite of pasting values. This brings over the formulas themselves. Excel is smart enough to adjust cell references relative to where you paste them, which is usually what you want.

  • Keep Source Column Widths (W): Ever paste data only to have your perfectly spaced columns get squished? This option pastes the data and then adjusts the column widths to match the source sheet, saving you a ton of manual resizing.

  • Transpose (T): A handy trick that switches your data from rows to columns or vice versa. If you copied three columns of ten rows, transposing will paste them as ten columns and three rows.

A Different Approach: Moving or Copying an Entire Sheet

Sometimes you don’t just want to export the data, you want to duplicate the entire sheet, including its structure, formatting, charts, and all. This is great for creating templates, like a monthly budget sheet that you can copy for each new month.

Follow these steps:

  1. Right-click on the tab of the sheet you want to copy at the bottom of the Excel window.

  2. From the context menu, select Move or Copy...

  3. A dialog box will appear. To create a duplicate in the same workbook, check the "Create a copy" box. Then, select which sheet it should be placed before.

  4. To move or copy the sheet to a completely different Excel file, use the "To book:" dropdown and select another open workbook.

  5. Click OK.

You’ll now have an identical copy of your source sheet, which you can rename and modify as needed.

Creating a Live Link: Referencing Data Between Sheets

What if you want the data on your destination sheet to update automatically whenever the source data changes? This is where cell referencing, or linking, comes in. This creates a dynamic "export" rather than a static one.

The method is surprisingly simple:

  1. Click on the cell in your destination sheet where you want the linked data to appear.

  2. Type the equals sign (=).

  3. Without pressing Enter, navigate to the source sheet by clicking its tab.

  4. Click on the cell that contains the data you wish to link.

  5. Press Enter.

You'll be taken back to your destination sheet, where you’ll see the data from the source cell. If you look in the formula bar, you'll see a reference that looks something like this:

='Sales Data'!B2

This formula tells Excel to display the value from cell B2 on the sheet named "Sales Data". Now, any time the value in 'Sales Data'!B2 changes, this cell will update automatically.

This is the foundation for building summary dashboards. You can create a master summary sheet that pulls totals and key metrics from various other data sheets, giving you a live overview of your project without any manual updating.

Using Lookup Functions to Pull Specific Data

Often, you don't need to copy an entire block of data. Instead, you need to pull specific information from a large dataset based on a unique identifier, like a product ID, employee name, or transaction number. This is where lookup functions like VLOOKUP and XLOOKUP are essential.

The Classic: VLOOKUP

VLOOKUP (Vertical Lookup) searches for a value in the first column of a data table on another sheet and returns a corresponding value from a specified column in the same row.

Let's say you have two sheets:

  • ‘Orders’: A sheet with columns for OrderID and ProductID.

  • ‘Products’: A sheet with columns for ProductID, ProductName, and Price.

You want to pull the ProductName from the ‘Products’ sheet into your ‘Orders’ sheet. Here’s how you'd use VLOOKUP:

=VLOOKUP(B2, Products!A:C, 2, FALSE)

Let's break that down:

  • B2 is the lookup_value - the Product ID in your Orders sheet that you're trying to find.

  • Products!A:C is the table_array - the range of data on the ‘Products’ sheet where you are looking. It's crucial that the lookup value (ProductID) is in the first column of this range (Column A).

  • 2 is the col_index_num - it tells Excel to return the value from the 2nd column of your table array (ProductName).

  • FALSE tells VLOOKUP to find an exact match. You'll almost always want to use FALSE here to prevent mismatches.

The Modern Upgrade: XLOOKUP

If you have a modern version of Excel (Microsoft 365 or Excel 2021), you should use XLOOKUP. It's more powerful, more flexible, and less prone to errors than VLOOKUP.

Here’s how you’d solve the same problem with XLOOKUP:

=XLOOKUP(B2, Products!A:A, Products!B:B)

It’s much more intuitive:

  • B2 is still your lookup value (ProductID).

  • Products!A:A is the lookup_array - the column where you're looking for the ProductID. Unlike VLOOKUP, this doesn't have to be the first column!

  • Products!B:B is the return_array - the column from which you want to return a value (ProductName).

XLOOKUP is easier to write and fixes many of VLOOKUP's limitations, making it the superior choice for pulling specific data records from one sheet to another.

For Automation and Big Data: Power Query

If you find yourself repeatedly exporting, filtering, and cleaning the same data every week or month, then Power Query is the tool you need. It’s Excel's built-in data connection and transformation engine, designed for automating repeatable data import workflows.

Think of it as recording your steps in an "export" process, which you can then "replay" by clicking a single refresh button.

Here's a simplified overview of how it works:

  1. Go to the Data tab on the ribbon.

  2. In the "Get & Transform Data" group, click From Table/Range (if your source data is in an Excel Table) or Get Data > From File > From Excel Workbook.

  3. This opens the Power Query Editor window. Here, you can select the specific sheet or table you want to pull data from.

  4. Once the data is loaded into the editor, you can apply transformations. For example, you can:

    • Choose Columns: Remove columns you don't need in your destination sheet.

    • Filter Rows: Keep only the rows that meet certain criteria (e.g., only sales from the "North" region).

    • Merge Data: Combine this table with data from another table.

  5. When you're done, click Close & Load To... This lets you choose where to output your final, processed data - usually as a table on a new worksheet.

The real power comes from the "Refresh" button. Once you’ve set this up, you can add new data to your source sheet, go to your destination sheet, right-click the Power Query table, and hit Refresh. Power Query will automatically repeat all your transformation steps and update the output with the new data. No more repetitive copy-paste jobs.

Final Thoughts

Choosing the right way to export data between Excel sheets depends entirely on your goal. From a quick copy-paste for static reports to dynamic lookups with XLOOKUP and fully automated pipelines with Power Query, Excel provides a tool for every scenario, empowering you to manage and analyze your data more effectively.

While mastering Excel is great, juggling data for sales and marketing reporting often involves more than just spreadsheets. You might be downloading CSVs from Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, Shopify, and your CRM, trying to stitch everything together manually. This is where we built Graphed to help. We automate that entire process by connecting directly to all your platforms, allowing you to build real-time dashboards and get answers using simple, natural language instead of spending your day wrangling spreadsheets.