How to copy a table from a website to Excel or Google Sheets

Five ways to get an HTML table from a web page into Excel or Google Sheets, and which one to use when.

1. Select, copy and paste

Drag from the first cell to the last, press Ctrl+C (⌘+C on a Mac), click a cell in Excel or Google Sheets and press Ctrl+V. If the page's fonts and colors come along, paste with Ctrl+Shift+V (values only in Google Sheets) or use Paste Special → Text in Excel.

When it goes wrong: everything lands in one column, merged header cells shift the columns, or the selection also grabs menus and ads. Then use one of the methods below.

2. Excel: Data → From Web (Power Query)

1. In Excel for Windows (Microsoft 365, 2016 or later) open Data → From Web (in some versions: Get Data → From Other Sources → From Web).
2. Paste the page URL and confirm.
3. The Navigator lists every table it found (Table 0, Table 1 …). Pick one, check the preview and click Load.

The query remembers the URL: Data → Refresh All pulls the latest version later. It only sees the HTML the server sends, so tables that the page builds with JavaScript after loading, or pages that need you to log in, usually come back empty.

3. Google Sheets: IMPORTHTML

Type this into a cell, with the page URL and the table's position on the page (1 = first table):

=IMPORTHTML("https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities", "table", 2)

The number counts every <table> in the page's HTML, including invisible layout tables and sidebars. On that page table 1 is the sidebar, so the city list is table 2. If you get the wrong table, try the next number. The sheet re-fetches the page from time to time, so it stays current. Same limits as Excel: public pages and server-rendered tables only. "list" instead of "table" imports a bulleted or numbered list.

4. A browser extension (works on any table you can see)

An extension reads the table from the page as your browser shows it, so it also works behind a login and on pages that build their tables with JavaScript. PlainTables (ours, free) lists every table on the page; click one to copy it as TSV (pastes straight into cells), Markdown or CSV, or download CSV or Excel (.xlsx). Merged cells are expanded so columns stay aligned, and it only reads a page when you click its button.

5. Python: pandas.read_html

import io, urllib.request
import pandas as pd

url = "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities"
req = urllib.request.Request(url, headers={"User-Agent": "table-export-script/1.0 (you@example.com)"})
html = urllib.request.urlopen(req).read().decode("utf-8")
tables = pd.read_html(io.StringIO(html), match="Urban area")  # needs lxml
tables[0].to_excel("cities.xlsx")  # needs openpyxl

match= keeps only tables that contain that text; without it, tables[0] is often a sidebar or navigation box. Many sites, Wikipedia included, reject Python's default user agent (HTTP 403), which is why the example sets its own. Tables with a two-row header become multi-level columns, which to_excel can only write with the index column kept. It reads the server's HTML, so the JavaScript and login limits of methods 2 and 3 apply here too.

Already have the HTML?

Paste it into the free HTML table to CSV / Excel converter: it runs in your browser and handles colspan and rowspan.

Building the page yourself? See how to add an "Export to Excel" button with JavaScript.

Written with AI assistance. The pandas example was run against the page shown, and the IMPORTHTML table number was checked against that page's HTML. PlainTables is our extension; the other methods are free and built into Excel, Google Sheets and pandas.