Saving excel tables without inline styles to FrontPage

Many genealogists use an Excel spreadsheet to enter census records, obituaries, vital records data, and other information they would like to include as a part of their website. In the process, they have discovered that copying and pasting the file into FrontPage will create bloated code and "heavy" pages.

NOTE: If you are using Firefox as your default browser and/or you have it installed on your system, there is a Firefox addon to help you with the task of copying and pasting table code.

Table2Clipboard - allows you to copy and paste table information from the Web right into your favorite database program or web editor. You select rows and columns from a table simply by pressing and holding the Control key and picking rows/columns with left mouse button. The selection can then be copied to the clipboard and pasted into Excel, FrontPage, Expression Web or NVU. You get the table without all of the extra code.

Screenshot - code pasted into FrontPage from Excel This is the code generated from only part of ONE row of the table. Multiply it by fifty rows or a hundred rows! (new window will open)

Actual page Excel file pasted into FrontPage - Right Click | View Source

If you are using Excel tables within your website, remember these tips -

Pasting directly into FrontPage from Excel - Word documents too - will create bloated code
There are still many people who are still on dialup Internet access. Heavy pages will be very slow for them to load and view.
Don't make the pages to long. Split the tables up into manageable sizes so they load quickly.

Tip provided by Tina Clarke

Open excel file in Excel
File | Save As - where it says File as type click the drop down arrow and select CSV (Comma delimited) (*.csv)
Press Save

Then in FrontPage go to File | Import | Add File - browse to the location of the file you just saved and select Press Open then Ok on the Import Dialog box. The file will then appear in FrontPage.

Right click on the file in Folder View and choose Open With | Open with Notepad, if notepad is not available select choose Program and browse to it.

Screenshot - Open with Notepad.

NOTE: Remember to untick Associate files of this type with the selected program. (IMPORTANT)

Press ok and a text file will appear, right click and Select All. Copy All.

Back to FrontPage open the page you wish the table to appear and right click and press paste.

Select the paste you just made and go to the Table menu - Click Convert Text to Table, the Convert Text To Table Dialog box will appear select commas radio button and press ok.

Screenshot - convert text to table.

Your file will now appear in a normal table with no formatting or inline styles

csv inserted file converted to table. Right Click | View Source

table after formatting with styles Right Click | View Source.

Additional Resources for Data Tables