Automated Data Acquisition using Microsoft Excel

Abstract

The process of Web Scraping allows the automated extraction of data from an entire website and turn it into a tabular dataset that can be used for reporting and analysis. There are numerous techniques and tools for web scraping and each one of them are better suited for certain scenarios. One of the most popular techniques, is the direct extraction of the data from the markup language within the website. That is the technique that will discussed in this paper and it will be put into practice by developing a tool using Microsoft Excel. For most individuals that regularly wok with data, Microsoft Excel is one of the most important and useful tools they can have when they need to do a quick analysis or visualize data. Microsoft Excel is powered by an extensible framework and that is Visual Basic for Applications, which allows the implementation of robust functionalities in a tool. In this paper, it will be combined the power of Microsoft Excel and its underlying features, and a popular Web Scraping technique to automate the process of web data acquisition and have this data ready to be processed in Microsoft Excel. Key Terms - Data Automation, Microsoft Excel, Web Programming, Web Scraping.