Best way of transferring spreadsheet info in a web page?

[Room101]

I have lots of data in Excel that I want to end up in tables on my website pages.

What is the best way to do this?

If I do a simple drag over the data cells in excel then paste into Web Designer it pastes in as a graphic with the cell outlines showing (which I don’t want, I'm just after the contents).

I have lots and lots of info to copy and paste, it's product specification data (I make boring websites - sorry )
Before anyone suggests it I will also have the info downloadable as a pdf, but I also need it on the webpage too.

Thanks in advance (just looked through the manual, no help there).

yours, Stan

[Room101]

this is where I'm at right now (but there may be a 'Xara way') ...
Copy from Excel into Powerpoint
Change size of text in Powerpoint to ??? point you want to end up with in the webpage
Copy and paste to Web Designer as an enhanced metafile.

[Acorn]

Stan, if you are not editing the data subsequently, a straight copy from Excel pastes into Xara using Rich Text Format, styles and all.
Enhanced Metafile paste also allows limited editing and scaling.

Acorn

[Room101]

a

[Room101]

thanks Acorn. I have been super busy but will have a few more goes using different settings including yours (which I thought I had but you just never know sometimes). I do know that some of the pastes included the light grey excel cell outlines (which I don't want), so in that case it must have been treating the cut and past as a graphic rather than as data.
I will have a few more goes at it because what I have now is just plain ugly but we needed to get something live. This should be such a super simple thing to do I'm sure I'm messing things up at my end ... probably in my head :-)

.... I hate to show you this (be gentle with me) but these are my ugly tables in the bottom half of this page (that I'm going to kill asap) http://www.nykcs.com/38999series3connectors.htm

[Room101]

pasting rtf results in bad formatting
copying from excel then pasting to word as html then copying that and pasting as html to web designer results in a CRASH twice! with a critical message - I have sent an error report to Xara
copying from excel into word then copying that and pasting in web designer results in a paste with no data - just an invisible box with the four corners marked
getting pretty frustrated with this software - cant edit more than two variants and it goes dog slow, and now I cant copy and paste tables I make in excel into web designer. The only ones I have in there are bitmaps with shoddy formatting upon paste. really not happy as I have lots of these to do.

[Room101]

Ok, here’s the best way to copy and paste a table created in excel into web designer.

The problem with excel is in most copy and paste it will also take the grey cell boxes over with it, you don’t want to see this in a website table, so go to View in Excel and click the box to turn Gridlines Off.
The other problem you will have is that you’ll be wanting dumb data pasting over and Excel will try and tell you by putting little green triangles in loads of cell comers and sometimes a small popdown by the side of the cell that 19-66 is not correctly formatted to be the only year England won the World Cup (and lots of other nonsense). So go to the main popdown then go to Excel Options then turn off Background Error Checking.
You will now have a nice clean formatted table that you’d like to see in a website page.
You can then drag over the cells you need and copy and paste straight into Web Designer as an Enhanced Metafile (without the need to go as an intermediate paste via Word or Powerpoint to lose that formatting we just switched off).
I’ve noticed that either Excel or Windows or Xara doesn’t make a nice clean table border even if you have the border formatted as a thick line like I had in Excel. So you will then have to click your table in Web Design, pick a colour and line thickness (you guys know how to do that), then you have a nice clean table in Xara
Phew!!! … that was yonks of faffing around sussing that one out.
I have not updated the website yet but I will because I don’t like my scruffy and variable bitmaps.

[Boy]

Thanks for the detailed follow-up. Nice find, 'Gridlines Off' in View. Now I only have to remember it when I need it!

[Acorn]

I just don't get any of these artefacts.

I select all the cells I want. Copy and Paste and choose Paste Special > Rich Text Format (RTF).

Do not use Enhance Metafile as I advised before.

What you then get is a collection of grouped rows which you can shuffle around.

RTF copies over fonts, sizes, colours, borders and other formatting.

Acorn