Double-click the downloaded
.zip file to decompress it.
The decompressed file
is named WebTableReport.xlt
After unzipping, WebTableReport.xlt can be opened
like any other Excel workbook.
The .xlt file extension
tells your computer that this is an Excel template.
You may wish to move WebTableReport.xlt
to your Templates folder for convenience, but you can
store WebTableReport.xlt in any
directory on your computer.
Windows computers To allow the input form to display do
the following
Excel 2003 and earlier:Set the Macro Security option to
"Medium" in Excel's Tools>Options
Excel 2007 and later:Click the message bar to enable
content or enable macros
Macintosh computers
If prompted when opening the
template, choose to "Enable Macros"
We recommend that you put the
template into the Microsoft Office Templates location. This enables the
template to be displayed in the Project Gallery.
This template will appear in
Project Gallery's New tab under My Templates if you put
WebTableReport.xlt in Applications:Microsoft
Office
2004:Templates:My
Templates
How Web Table Report works
WebTableReport.xlt uses Excel's "web
query" capabilities. You enter a URL by typing or pasting into a form.
Then you click a button and Web
Table Report opens a new Excel workbook, and then downloads
tables from the URL using a web query. Web Table Report then formats the
rows and columns and attempts to present
an attractive table in Excel. The workbooks that are generated by this
template are ordinary Excel workbooks with .xls extensions. The
workbooks generated by Web Table
Report do not contain macros.
The workbooks generated are linked to
the source URL. Excel's "External Data" toolbar will be activated
whenever a cell in the displayed data is selected. You can adjust the
workbook's settings from the "Data Range Properties" button on the
External Data toolbar. These settings affect only the current data
range that is selected based upon the cell that's currently selected.
Web Table Report 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. Web Table Report
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.
Consider Web Table Report as
one more tool in your arsenal to capture data from the web. Some web site designers start with
information that was obviously once in a nice data table, which is a
table having a single header row followed by delimited rows. These
behind the times site designers turn the tabular data to plain text,
apply a typewriter font and then pad the text with spaces to force the
text line up into columns so that it looks like a table. This was
necessary in the 1970's and earlier when everyone was using dot-matrix impact printers connected to "dumb
terminals," which are now known as "thin clients" and "cloud computing
terminals." Web Table Report
contains instructions how to use Excel's built-in Text-to-Columns
feature to convert such badly formatted data into actual table columns
and rows.
Support Information
Disclaimer:
WebTableReport.xlt comes as-is. There is no warranty. There is
no support. The template was originally created for University at
Buffalo Libraries, but is no longer distributed by the University
Libraries.
Share freely
You are welcome to use
WebTableReport.xlt as much as you like without any time limit.
You are free to distribute
WebTableReport.xlt to anyone and everyone.
The template is exactly the
same
regardless of whether you choose the Windows or Macintosh version.