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Chapter 20

Publishing Spreadsheets

as Web Pages

In This Chapter
Saving the worksheet as a static Web page
Saving the worksheet as a Web page with an interactive data table, data list, pivot table, and chart
Exporting data from an interactive Web page to Excel
Adding data from a Web page to a worksheet

ith the continuing growth and accessibility to the World Wide Web, HTML (Hypertext
WMarkup Language) and XML (Extensible Markup Language) file formats — once
pretty much exclusive to the arena of Web servers — have become more and more common
file types understood and used by almost any program running on personal computers.
This is so much the case that Excel can now not only save workbooks in the HTML or XML
file formats but open them for editing within the program as well.

In this chapter, you get a chance to practice converting Excel spreadsheets to HTML Web
pages for use on the Internet or the company intranet. As part of this practice, you not only
create static Web pages whose data are frozen but interactive Web pages that users who
view the pages with Internet Explorer (version 4.0 or later) can edit online. You also get to
practice importing data from Web pages on the Internet directly into your Excel worksheets
using the program’s Web Query feature.

Saving Worksheets as Web Pages

Converting your favorite spreadsheet into a Web page ready for publishing on the World
Wide Web is no more difficult than opening the worksheet and then choosing the Excel
File➪Save As Web Page command from its Menu bar.
However, before you take this simple step, you normally want to see how the spreadsheet
appears in the HTML file format when viewed in your default Web browser by choosing the
File➪Web Page Preview command. Doing this launches your computer’s default Web browser
(usually Internet Explorer, unless you’ve specifically installed and selected another one) and
displays the spreadsheet more or less as it will appear in that browser when saved as an
HTML file.