Where can I find some dummy data to teach my girlfriend Excel?

Question

In particular, tabular data that can be graphed. What's your favorite source of interesting data?

Answer 1

There is a huge amount of real world data freely available on various EU websites, such as Eurostat. All can be exported as .xls or .xml.

Most national governments will have some similar statistics portal, although some require login/subscription for the raw data.

Answer 2

Why not you just use the sample files located in under C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\Samples directory?

They are sample data from a fictional company called "Northwind", and are designed to simulate real company data that can be used to teach Excel tricks.

Answer 3

Try http://www.generatedata.com/#generator

Answer 4

I would just use any old data I've got on harddrive already. I have some old budget calculations and whatnot. Otherwise it can't be that much work to whip up some useful sandbox data to play with. Here are two tables of data with formulas and graphs that you should be able to grab and put into Excel.

Answer 5

Try the US Census web site. For example, here's a bunch of data on Georgia. At the bottom is a link to download it.

Answer 6

Complete list of US Zip codes

list of other free aggregated data downloadable as xls and csv.