I sometimes want to copy html tables found on websites into a program that is able to display them properly on my computer so that I can save the data and use it as a reference. Whenever I copy a table in Firefox and paste it into Microsoft Excel, or Open Office, the table structure and formatting is lost. All cells are pasted without the correct formatting which can be quite frustrating if you want to copy a large table.
The creator of one of the runner up add-ons of the Extend Firefox competition must have had similar thoughts because he created the Firefox add-on Table 2 Clipboard which retains the formatting of the table when copying and pasting it.
If you want to retain the table structure you right-click part of the table and select Copy Whole Table from the menu. Open the software where you want to copy the table into and paste it. The table structure was retained and all data is in the correct rows and columns.
It is also possible to copy only selected cells. Press the CTRL key and left-click on the cells that you want to copy to select them. Right-click the table at the end and select Copy selected cells.
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You can also copy the table and then in Excel choose to “Paste special…” and choose Text format. No plug-in required.
Unfortunately we used the addon to clean up all the junky code created in pasting tables created by word and excel and pasted into webpages. Now while it will clean up some of the code, it leaves all the cell width and height options rather than giving us the nice clean table code when it was first released.
Even choosing just the save links doesn’t get rid of the width and heights when pasting into FrontPage or Expression Web. I want my old one back. At least his one does retain the links.
Internet Explorer actually does the job in this case. One of the very few times where IE is better than Firefox.