Instead of copying and pasting, you can quickly copy data from a web browser to Excel, by dragging and dropping.
Video: Copy Web Data to Excel
To see the steps in action, you can watch this 30 second video. The full transcript is below the video.
Video Transcript
If you want to copy something from a web browser, into Excel, you can just drag and drop
On my website, I’m just going to scroll down a little, and select some text, and links, and graphics
Then, just point anywhere, even if it’s the clicking hand
Instead of clicking, we’re going to just drag over here to Excel
Let go, and it copies the links, the text, the graphics, and you’re ready to go!
___________
I just did a quick few tests, because this seems too good to be true.
Using IE8, when I try to drag anything out of the IE window, the cursor changes to the red circle with the diagonal line.
When I use Firefox, I can drag content from the browser to Excel, but any tabular data is converted to a long space delimited string (tabs and line feeds are converted) and pasted into a single cell. It’s only when the beginning of the copied content is outside of a table that the content is dropped into a grid of cells. So I either take extra time using copy and paste, or extra time cleaning up what the cat dragged in.
Bummer. Guess I’ll keep doing this the old fashioned way.
Thanks Jon, for posting your results. I can drag from IE8 to Excel, but I’m using Windows XP Pro, so maybe that makes a difference.
With IE8 I get the table format, whether I copy part of the table, or include text outside the table. Dragging or copying and pasting give the same results.
With FireFox, the table format is only kept if I use your tip of starting the copy outside the table. But that’s true whether I copy and paste, or drag to Excel.
Strange!
Never knew you could do that.
I also tried the drag/drop into Word (Windows XP and Firefox) and the results looked pretty good to me.
So, what exactly is a “Brower”? (Read your title again…[grin])
Actually, it works more reliably with Word, except that the formats are Word’s defaults instead of what appears on the site (e.g., Times in very large sizes).
Thanks David and Jim, glad it worked for you!
Rick, I don’t know what you’re talking about. The title looks fine to me. 😉
Jon, I get default fonts in Excel too, probably the closest match to the font family specified in the web page.
Nope, it’s always TNR, main text at least 12 pt (10 is fine for regular text) and the largest header is like 36 pt. I should probably apply a template with fixed up styles, but I don’t need this too frequently, once or twice a month.
@Deb – You are right, the title looks fine to me too… now 😉
MS Office drag-and-drop is frequently flakey because Office maintains its own clipboard outside the one that is part of Windows itself. I’ve seen situations where copying directly from MSIE or Firefox into either Excel or Outlook does not work but copying into Word and then copying from Word into Excel or Outlook does the trick. Why three MS programs are sometimes needed when two don’t work right I have no idea, I guess it’s like the Holy Hand Grenade from Monty Python:
And the Lord spake, saying, “First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Hand_Grenade_of_Antioch
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Wow this is a great tip! Just told the other people in our office and all were impressed (it’s something that’s annoyed many of us for many years). Thanks for the tip!
use Firefox. I can highlight text and drag it from browser on to excel single cell. I cant do it using chrome or explorer. saves me 75% of my time