Google Sheets: Scraping data from the internet

Step 1
First, you need to create a blank spreadsheet. Go to sheets.google.com. Under Start a new spreadsheet, click the + icon.

Step 2
To name your spreadsheet, click the text in the top left corner. Let's name this one "Highest Grossing Movies."

Step 1
Go to google.com and search highest grossing films. One of the first links should be a Wikipedia entry with multiple tables. One list, called “the top 50 highest-grossing films of all time” cites multiple references, so we will use that one. Always check to make sure you’re scraping data from reliable sources.

Step 2
To import this table to Google Sheets, copy the address of the Wikipedia page by highlighting the URL, right clicking on it, and selecting copy.

Step 1
The importHTML tool needs three parameters to work: 1) a URL2) the type of data we’re collecting, either a table or list3) the number representing the position of the table or list in the HTML code. In this example, the first instance of a table would be numbered as one, as the table we want is the first one that shows up in the HTML. You can use trial and error to find what the position of the table is (1, 2, 3, etc.) or right click the webpage, select Inspect > Find to locate the table in the code.

Step 2
Go  to the blank sheet you created and navigate to cell A1. Type:=importHTML("https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films", "table", 1)

Step 3
Notice that the URL and the element type (in our case, table) go between quotes — this will make the parameters green. The last parameter is a number not within quotes and it will be colored blue.