Format the data in Excel as a table - PowerApps Tutorial

- [Instructor] We're going to begin to create a new app in Power Apps. This app will connect to data in an Excel workbook, store the data there that we collect, because it is a survey app and it will be stored in OneDrive for Business. But we're not going to begin by opening up Power Apps. We're actually going to start by opening up the Excel desktop app. And there is a very specific reason for that. Because we need to format the data in this Excel workbook as a table. We see here that we have a small table. The first row is our header row, and this is the information that we're going to collect in our survey app. And I have put one row of sample data in there that we can use as we're creating our apps. So we have something to look at. The first thing we have to do is format this as a table. Right now it's simply a range. So we're going to select all of this data and we're going to come to the styles section on the home ribbon. And we will click here where it says format as table. Once we do that, we have to select the style. I'm just going to choose a basic style here. We get this little window format as a table, and you'll see that my table has headers has been selected. And that's important. If it's not, make sure you check that box and we're going to click okay. And now we have a table. Now, the reason we have decided to do this in the desktop version of Excel is because we need to name this table range. You'll see our table is selected and the table design tab is open on our ribbon. If we come over here to the left, to the very first section properties, you'll see that we have an option for table name. And right now the table name is simply table one. We're going to rename this table. We're going to give it a name. I'm going to call this results. Type the name in, click enter. So that when we connect this to Power Apps, we know exactly which table we're using. Because in this app, we're going to use several tables of data. We have another tab here called lists. And in here we have several lists of information. This is the stuff we're collecting and what's going to happen is we're going to create dropdown lists in our app from these lists. So we also need to format all of this information as tables as well. I've done it with five tables already. We're just going to do this last one here for gender. I'm going to select the data again, just like we did before. We're going to click on format as table, choose a style. And this one does not recognize the header row, but we want to, make sure we select that and click okay. And I'm going to name this table gender. And I've already named all of these tables. This one you see is named ethnicity, age, income, flavor, and recommend. This is going to make it a lot easier for us to choose the proper table when we're connecting those dropdown lists to this data. Couple of little things that I've done here, I want to tell you about, I have left a blank row in each of these tables so that we can have a blank option in the app. I've also just for me for ease of looking at this, I've left a blank row between each of these tables and two blank columns here between these tables. Now, the reason I chose two is because this column here is going to be filled with information from Power Apps. The same with this here. The column to the right of these little lists is going to get Power Apps information. And then to keep it, again, simplified for me ease of looking at it, I also left a blank column here between these two groups of tables. So our workbook is done. Everything is formatted. We're going to save it, close it. We'll go to OneDrive and we're going to upload it to OneDrive. So we'll click on upload files and select questions for survey. There we go. Our Excel workbook has been uploaded to our OneDrive for Business, and now you know how to format the data in Excel as a table to prepare it for use in Power Apps.