The Tableizer

This free and fast little tool converts spreadsheet cells into HTML so they can be published on the web or embedded directly into a webpage as an HTML table. You copy-and-paste the Excel or Calc spreadsheet cells into the box, choose the font size, font style and header color, click the Tableize It! button, and it spits out the code and a preview of what the table will look like.

Try it at http://tableizer.journalistopia.com/

Thanks to Loretta Lohman and Erin Pheil for the tip.

Importing Tabular Data Into Dreamweaver

You can quickly import data from Excel directly into a web page in Dreamweaver using the Import Tabular Data command.

The first step is to save the Excel file as a tab delimited .txt file using the Save As Type pulldown menu(a screenshot is below).



Next, bring up your webpage in Dreamweaver. Go to the Insert menu, choose Table Objects, and then Import Tabular Data (shown below).



Browse to the file in the Dialogue box (shown below), define the size, in pixels, of your cell padding (space between cell wall and content), cell spacing (space between cells), and borders. That's it! Easy, huh?

Excel 07: Table Formatting

A cool new feature in Excel 07 is the automatic formatting options available for tables.

If you go to the Insert tab, choose Table, and select the data you want to convert, the Table tools and formatting options will appear in the ribbon.




By default, Excel will band the rows and columns for easier reading. It will also add pulldown filter menus to each of the column headers, a total row at the bottom, and a pulldown menu in the bottom right to quickly get a minimum, maximum, average or sum of your total row. Each of these options can be easily turned on or off in the Table Styles Options section of the ribbon (see below).

Excel 07 Page Layout View

Microsoft Excel 07 - the latest version of Excel - offers a solution to one of the most vexing aspects of Excel: print formatting. In older versions of Excel, to format the printed version of a spreasdsheet, you needed to go to File, then Page Setup, then Print Preview, and then sort of hop back and forth between Page Setup and Print Preview and tweak the layout to get the correct printed page. Getting the rows and columns to break at just the right spot was a cumbersome and time-consuming process.

Excel 07 has a Page Layout view as the center icon at the lower righthand corner of the page (it's circled in the illustration to the right). It changes the view on the document screen (below) to how it will look when printed so that you can tweak it and see your changes enacted immediately. The row and column heading bars are moved to just outside the document, so you can resize rows and columns, hide columns, etc., just by working with the row and column bar options. You can also use the Ribbon commands to change font size and styles, hide or show gridlines, add border styles, all on the document pane, until you get the exact printed document you want. You can even add headers and footer by clicking directly on the page and typing. Page breaks, both horizontal and vertical, automatically readjust as you make changes to the document.