How to Copy a Table from a Website into Google Docs™ or Sheets™

Simple HTML tables paste straight into Google Docs™ as real tables. For Google Sheets™, the IMPORTHTML function can pull a web table in without any copying at all. And when a page's table falls apart on paste, paste it as plain text and convert it in place.

Web tables range from clean HTML grids (which travel well) to layouts assembled from styled boxes (which don't). Here's the decision path.

First try: just copy and paste

1. On the web page, click before the first cell and drag through the last cell of the table.
2. Copy (Ctrl+C / Cmd+C) and paste into Google Docs™ or Sheets™.

If the source is a genuine HTML table, Docs™ creates a proper table and Sheets™ fills a matching cell range. Adjust column widths and you're done. If instead you get one long column, squashed text, or scattered fragments, move on to the next options.

Google Sheets™: pull the table with IMPORTHTML

For tables on public web pages, Sheets™ can fetch the data itself — no clipboard involved:

1. In a blank cell, enter:

=IMPORTHTML("https://example.com/page", "table", 1)

2. The third argument is the table's position on the page — 1 for the first table, 2 for the second, and so on. Try different numbers until the right one appears.
3. The data loads as regular cells and refreshes automatically when the page changes.

To freeze the current values, copy the range and use Edit > Paste special > Values only — or copy the range into Google Docs™ to place it in a document.

Fix a broken paste with the Text To Table Converter Add-On

When a site's "table" is really styled markup, the paste often lands as lines of text. Rebuild it in place:

1. Paste into your Doc, Sheet, or Slide using right-click > Paste without formatting — plain text is the cleanest starting point.
2. Select the pasted lines.
3. Run Extensions > Text To Table Converter > 🔤 ➜ 🔡 Selected Text to Table. The Add-On detects the separators and builds the table.

This is also the only practical route in Google Slides™, where neither table pastes nor IMPORTHTML exist.

A note on copyright

Being able to copy a table doesn't mean you may republish it. For anything beyond personal use, check the site's terms and credit your source.

Get the Add-On

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Text To Table Converter

Rebuild web tables for free: Use the free Text To Table Converter add-on to turn pasted text into clean tables in Docs™, Slides™, and Sheets™.

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Next Step: Tables Trapped in PDFs

• How to Copy a PDF Table to Google Docs™ - The Easy Way - The same paste-then-convert approach, applied to PDF files.