VT Tables Tip: Easy way to import tables from spreadsheets

[exit237a]

I recently had a breakthrough I wanted to share here, thinking at least a few folks might find it helpful for their own VolleyTalk use.

After copy/pasting 328 individual cells from an MS Excel spreadsheet into a blank table on VT to create this schedule for the PVF regular season, I was reminded how inefficient it is to do that by hand and how cumbersome VT table editing can be.  Motivated to find a better way, I realized that MS Excel can save a spreadsheet to a text file, which can then be easily imported into VT.

For grins, I put together this twelve-step tutorial with annotated screen captures on how to import tables into VT from Excel.  I'm also tagging some folks that have recently posted tables on VT, in case they don't know this hack: avid 2.0 , The Bofa on the Sofa , bprtbone , bruinsgold , Cruz'n , houstonbear15 , huskergeek , ilikecorn , kiyoat , ned3vball , n00b , pelagius , Rich Kern , trojansc , vballfan17 , vballfreak808 , volleynerd , vup .  Maybe they or others have a different approach to importing tables they'd share, too.

And special thanks to knapplc for teaching me how to use an external image hosting site to save and import images to VT!

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1. Copy the source table

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2. Paste the data into Excel

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3. Resize column width

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4. Insert blank columns

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5. Enter table code

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6. Save as Text (Tab delimited)

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7. Delete unwanted quotation marks

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8. Select all text and copy

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9. Paste text into VolleyTalk, BBCode tab

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10. BBCode view of pasted text

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11. Preview view of pasted text

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12. Completed table view once posted

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[gopherhim]

Thanks for this exit237a. Great post!

[exit237a]

Apr 8, 2024 18:11:54 GMT -5 gopherhim said:

Thanks for this exit237a . Great post!

You're welcome!

[nellynel]

I have just nominated you exit237a for a Nobel prize😀

[vup]

I never thought I’d see the day. Thank you exit237a!

[bzo]

A slightly easier way is to just use a TSV to BBcode online converting tool like theenemy.dk/table/



Just copy-paste your tab delimited table into the page, click create table (specify the options first if you want), and copy-paste to output into the BBcode tab in your forum post.


tableconvert.com/csv-to-bbcode is another more modern looking tool with some extra options, but it seems like there is no option to specify if the first line should be a header row or not in this tool (it's always set to header row with "th" table header cells instead of "td" table data cells).

[rainbowbadger]

Wow, exit237a - poster of the year stuff, this is. Serious game-changer for me.

[mikegarrison]

Apr 9, 2024 3:46:19 GMT -5 bzo said:

A slightly easier way is to just use a TSV to BBcode online converting tool like theenemy.dk/table/

I was just coming here to say that since BBcode is a standard format, there must be converters already coded up.

I mean, I could write a code to do it in about 20 minutes, so surely other people have already done it.

[ned3vball]

Nice job exit237a . Here is another table generator option huskergeek  told me about. Note the style parameter for the [td] to add borders. I started using Python for my D3 data a few years ago and wrote a simple one with that. Helps if the source data has any exceptions in it. 

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For the tables, assuming you have the data in a spreadsheet it's a couple steps, but there is an easy way to get them to function.

First, copy it to www.tablesgenerator.com/html_tables  via File -> "Paste table data..." and check the "Do not generate CSS" option.
Click Generate.

Copy the HTML code into notepad or another text editor. Cntl+H and replace < with [ and > with ]. And you've got ready-made BBCode tables.
###

This worked well. I used Notepad for a simple text editor. The table produced does not have any cell borders. To add a white (255,255,255) border the base [td] element needs to have this added with a global search and replace:

[td style="border:1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255);padding:3px;"]

[exit237a]

Thanks for sharing those other table import options!  I figured there'd be other ways to get to the same place.

If anyone has further questions about the method in the OP, let me know.  I'd add that if people have a working proficiency with MS Excel, it's pretty quick and painless.

[mikegarrison]

Apr 9, 2024 17:26:39 GMT -5 exit237a said:

Thanks for sharing those other table import options!  I figured there'd be other ways to get to the same place.

If anyone has further questions about the method in the OP, let me know.  I'd add that if people have a working proficiency with MS Excel, it's pretty quick and painless.

Your OP was still quite helpful. Not only did it kick off the initial discussion, but several of your steps are still quite useful for getting a random table into a spreadsheet.

Once it is in a spreadsheet, you *can* go ahead and insert the BBcode format like you show, but you can also either just save the spreadsheet data to CSV or you can cut/paste (which typically will produce TSV). Then BBcode converters can do the BBcode automagically.

But you still have to then import it into your post, and your OP helps with that too.

My code that I have for making my PAC-12 weekly posts is more complicated and does things like read and parse native HTML, but it's also quite specific and not useful as a general tool.

[JT]

Apr 9, 2024 6:43:25 GMT -5 ned3vball said:

This worked well. I used Notepad for a simple text editor. The table produced does not have any cell borders. To add a white (255,255,255) border the base [td] element needs to have this added with a global search and replace:

[td style="border:1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255);padding:3px;"]

As a note, you can add the “border” style information to the “TR” row declaration (applies to all data-cells in the row) or to the “TABLE” table declaration element, and have it inherited by all row and cell entries within the table block. (Cuts down on repeated “noise” from duplicate CSS informatio.)