Struggling to transfer tables from Excel to Microsoft Loop? Weirdly enough, you’re not alone.
In this wonderful world of ours, simply copying and pasting often turns your perfectly organized rows and columns into an illegible blob. It’s frustrating, inefficient, and downright maddening for a superficially fancy and shiny new tool such as Microsoft Loop.
But don’t worry—there’s a solution! With a quick detour through HTML, you can preserve your table’s structure and make Loop finally behave. Read on for the full, step-by-step guide to reclaim your sanity and your tables.
Background
Yes, you’re reading this right – I did finally find a really convenient use for Microsoft Loop! Collaborating over a large table with the opportunity to vote on items – a very natural fit.
But even then, I ran into a couple of problems with it.
Problem
Microsoft Loop is supposed to be the next big thing in collaborative workspaces, right? A place where ideas flow seamlessly, and data dances harmoniously across apps. But try pasting a table from Excel into Loop, and you’ll quickly realize that this supposed symphony of productivity hits a very sour note.
See – Loop doesn’t recognize the table structure. Instead, it shoves all your carefully organized data into one big, messy cell. What was once a clean, beautiful table is now an incomprehensible blob of text. It’s as if Loop took one look at your data and thought, “What if I… didn’t try at all?”
Reason
Why does this happen?
Well, let’s speculate, shall we? Loop, for all its collaborative charm, has a glaring blind spot: it doesn’t seem to understand Excel’s language. You’d think apps within the same ecosystem would share a common vocabulary for handling something as basic as tables. But no, Loop sees your table and promptly loses its mind.
Why?
Perhaps it’s overambition. Loop isn’t content with being a mere app; it wants to be a cutting-edge workspace. And in its pursuit of innovation, it seemingly forgot about one of Microsoft’s traditional strong suites: good old-fashioned compatibility.
Anyway. Excel does admittedly handle tables weirdly when copy-pasting them out of Excel. Or, rather, Excel handles copy-pasting weird. So perhaps the fault is not completely Loop’s.
Solution
Fortunately, there is a way to fix this, even if it feels a bit like using a crowbar to crack open a walnut. The solution involves exporting your table as an HTML file and then pasting the HTML code into Loop. It’s not the most elegant method, but hey, it works. Here’s how:
Step 1: Export Your Table as an HTML File
- Highlight your table in Excel. Make sure it looks exactly how you want it to appear in Loop.
- Click File → Save As (or Save a Copy, depending on your Excel version).
- Select Web Page (.htm or .html) as the file type and save it to a convenient location.
This step converts your table into an HTML file—a format that Loop can parse more effectively.
Step 2: Extract the <table> Code from the HTML File
- Open the saved HTML file with a text editor. Notepad will do, but tools like Notepad++ or Visual Studio Code make this easier.
- Locate the
<table>tag in the file. The table’s HTML code begins here and ends at</table>. - Copy the entire chunk of code from the opening
<table>tag to the closing</table>tag.
This extracted code is your table in HTML format. It’s clean, organized, and ready for Loop.
Step 3: Paste the HTML Code into Microsoft Loop
- Open Microsoft Loop and navigate to where you want to insert the table.
- Paste the HTML code into a content block. If Loop is in a cooperative mood, it should render the table correctly, distributing the content across rows and columns as intended.
And just like that, your Excel table finds a new home in Loop – no mess, no fuss.
Final Thoughts
While it’s disappointing that Loop doesn’t handle tables from Excel more intuitively, this HTML workaround gets the job done. Until Microsoft addresses this limitation, exporting to HTML remains your best bet for preserving table structure and layout.
Is it perfect? No, it certainly isn’t.
Does it work? Absolutely.
So the next time Loop throws your Excel tables into chaos, remember: a little HTML can go a long way. 😆
He's been a developer from 2004 (starting with PHP and Java), and he's been working on .NET projects, Azure, Office 365, SharePoint and a lot of other stuff. He's also Microsoft MVP for Azure.
This is his personal professional (e.g. professional, but definitely personal) blog.
