How to convert Excel tables to HTML

5 things you should be aware of when converting an Excel file to HTML

When you use Excel's Save as Web Page function, it is important that you understand how its main features work in order to avoid most typical mistakes and prevent common error messages. This section provides a quick overview of the options you should pay special attention to when exporting your Excel spreadsheet to HTML.

1. Supporting files and hyperlinks

   As you know, web pages often contain images and other supporting files as well as hyperlinks to other web-sites. When you convert an Excel file to a web page, Excel automatically manages the related files and hyperlinks for you and saves them to the supporting files folder, named WorkbookName_files.

   When you save the supporting files such as bullets, graphics and background textures to the same web server, Excel maintains all the links as relative links. A relative link (URL) points to a file within the same web site; it specifies the file name or a root folder only rather than the full website address (e.g. href="/images/001.png"). When you delete any item saved as a relative link, Microsoft Excel automatically removes the corresponding file from the supporting folder.

   So, the main rule is to always keep the web page and supporting files in the same location, otherwise your web page may no longer display properly. If you move or copy your web page to another location, be sure to move the supporting folder to the same location to maintain the links. If you re-save the web page to another location, Microsoft Excel will copy the supporting folder for you automatically.

   When you save your web pages to different locations or if your Excel files contain hyperlinks to external web sites, absolute links are created. An absolute link specifies the full path to a file or a web-page that can be accessed from anywhere, e.g. www.your-domain/products/product1.htm.

2. Making changes and re-saving a Web page

   In theory, you can save your Excel workbook as a Web page, then open the resulting web page in Excel, make edits and re-save the file. However, in this case some Excel features will no longer be working. For example, any charts contained in your workbook will become separate images and you won't be able to modify them in Excel as usual.

   So, the best practice is to maintain your original Excel workbook up to date, make changes in the workbook, always save it as a workbook (.xlsx) first and then save as a Web page file (.htm or .html).

3. AutoRepublishing a Web page

   If you selected the AutoRepublish checkbox in the Publish As Web Page dialog discussed in step 8 above, then your web page will get updated automatically every time you save your Excel workbook. This is a really helpful option that lets you always maintain an up-to-date online copy of your Excel table.

   If you have turned on the AutoRepublish feature, a message will appear each time you save the workbook asking you to confirm whether you want to enable or disable AutoRepublish. If you want to have your Excel spreadsheet republished automatically, then naturally select Enable... and click OK.

   However, there are some circumstances when you may not want to republish your spreadsheet or selected items automatically, e.g. if your Excel file contains confidential info or has been edited by someone who is not a trusted source. In this case, you can make AutoRepublish temporarily or permanently unavailable.

   To temporarily disable AutoRepublish, select the first option "Disable the AutoRepublish feature while this workbook is open" in the above-mentioned message. This will turn off auto-republishing for the current session, but it will be enabled again the next time you open the workbook.

   To permanently disable AutoRepublish for all or selected items, open your Excel workbook, choose to save it as Web page and then click the Publish button. In the Choose list, under "Items to publish", select the item you do not want to republish and click the Remove button.

4. Excel features not supported in web pages

   Regrettably, a couple of very useful and popular Excel features are not supported when you convert your Excel worksheets to HTML:

   • Conditional formatting is not supported when saving an Excel spreadsheet as a Single File Web Page (.mht, .mhtml), so make sure you save it in the Web Page (.htm, .html) format instead. Data bars, color scales, and icon sets are not supported in either web page format.
   • Rotated or vertical text in not supported either when you export Excel data online as a Web page. Any rotated or vertical text in your workbook will be converted to horizontal text.
5. Most common issues when converting Excel files to HTML

   When converting your Excel workbook to a web page, you may run into the following known issues:

   • Cell's content (text) is truncated or not completely displayed. To prevent text from being cut off, you can either turn off the wrapped text option, or shorten the text, or widen the column width, also make sure the text is aligned to the left.
   • The items you save to an existing Web page always appear at the bottom of the page while you want them at the top or in the middle of the page. This is a normal behavior when you choose to save your Excel file as an existing web page. To move your Excel data to another position, either edit the resulting web-page in some HTML editor or rearrange the items in your Excel workbook and save it as a web page anew.
   • Links on the web page are broken. The most obvious reason is that you have moved either the web page or the supporting folder to another location. See supporting files and hyperlinks for more details.
   • A red cross (X) is displayed on the Web page. A red X indicates a missing image or other graphic. It may get broken for the same reason as hyperlinks. Just make sure you always keep the web-page and supporting folder in the same location.

TABLEIZER - free and simple Excel to HTML online converter

TABLEIZER is a one-click online converter that handles simple Excel tables with ease. All you need to do is to paste the contents of your Excel table to the window and click the Tableize It! button. Some basic formatting options such as font size, font type, header color, and even CSS styles are available.

After that you just copy the HTML code generated by the Tableizer converter and paste it to your webpage. The best thing when using this tool (apart from speed, simplicity and no cost : ) is the preview window that shows how your Excel table is going to look like online.

However, the formatting of your original Excel table will not be automatically converted to HTML as you see in the screenshot below, which is a very significant drawback in my judgment.

Advanced Excel to HTML converter (paid)

Unlike the two previous tools, the SpreadsheetConverter works as an Excel add-in and requires installation. I've downloaded a trial version (as you understand from the heading, this is commercial software) to see if it is in any respect better than either free online converter we've just experimented with.

I must say I was impressed! The conversion process is as easy as clicking the Convert button on the Excel ribbon.

And here is the result - as you can see, the Excel table exported to a web-page looks very close to the source data:

For the sake of experiment, I've also tried to convert a more complex workbook containing several sheets, a pivot table and a chart (the one we saved as web page in Excel in the first part of the article) but to my disappointment the result was much inferior to what Microsoft Excel produced. Maybe this is just because of the trial version's limitations.

Anyway, if you are willing to explore all the capabilities of this Excel to HTML converter, you can download an evaluation version of the SpreadsheetConverter add-in here.