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14. Tables: List Management Made Easy > The Basics of Tables
An Excel table is really nothing more than a way to store a bunch of information about a group of items. Each item occupies a separate row, and different kinds of information about the item reside side by side in adjacent columns. In database terminology, the rows are records, and the columns of information are fields. For example, the records could represent customers, and the fields could contain things like name, address, purchase history, and so on.
Excel tables have a number of advantages over ordinary worksheet data:
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They grow and shrink dynamically. As you fill data into adjacent rows and columns, the table grows to include the new cells. And as a table changes size, any formulas that use the table adjust themselves accordingly. In other words, if you have a formula that calculates the sum of a column in a table, the range that the SUM() function uses expands when you add a new record to the table.
