Instant WebQuery

A free Excel add-in by Jim Gordon, co-author of
Office 2011 for Mac All-in-One For Dummies


Instant WebQuery imports HTML row and column tables from web pages into Excel worksheets.

System Requirements

Requires Microsoft Excel:
For Mac 2011 or 2014
For Windows 2007, 2010, or 2013

If you did a custom install of Office and omitted Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), you must run the Office installer and install the missing VBA components.VBA is required to run Instant_WebQuery add-in.

Download instructions

  1. Click here to download Instant_WebQuery.zip
  2. Double-click the downloaded .zip file to decompress it.
  3. Put Instant_Webquery.xlam into your add-ins folder.
  4. Activate Instant_Webquery.

Easy to use

Mac Excel:
Instant_WebQuery adds a new command called WebQuery from URL to the bottom of the Data menu. Choose Web Query from URL to display the Instant_Webquery input form. Paste the URL of the web page from which you wish to extract HTML tables, and then choose either to import just the tables, or choose to import everything that Excel can render (which ususally isn't much more than just the tables). Allow a minute or so for the import to complete.

Excel 2007 through 2013 for Windows:
Instat_WebQuery adds a new command called WebQuery from URL to the Add-Ins tab of the Ribbon.
Choose Web Query from URL to display the Instant_Webquery input form. Paste the URL of the web page from which you wish to extract HTML tables, and then choose either to import just the tables, or choose to import everything that Excel can render (which ususally isn't much more than just the tables). Allow a minute or so for the import to complete.

Excel 2000 through 2003 for Windows:
Instant_WebQuery adds a new command called WebQuery from URL to the bottom of the Data menu. Choose Web Query from URL to display the Instant_Webquery input form. Paste the URL of the web page from which you wish to extract HTML tables, and then choose either to import just the tables, or choose to import everything that Excel can render (which ususally isn't much more than just the tables). Allow a minute or so for the import to complete.


The resulting table is called a QueryTable in Excel. You can adjust settings for each QueryTable by rightclicking anywhere in the QueryTable and choosing "Data Range Properties" from the pop-up menu. These settings affect only the current QueryTable's data range.

Instant_WebQuery works only with properly made HTML tables. Unfortunately, many data providers are clueless about how to properly arrange data in rows and columns on web page HTML table. Instant_WebQuery will do the best it can with what it's given from the web site. You may have to manually adjust row and column heights. Not all web pages will look right once imported into Excel.

Support Information

Disclaimer: Instant_WebQuery comes as-is. There is no warranty. There is no support.

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Updated May 18, 2014


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