Paste an Excel table into Gmail or Outlook

Why the formatting disappears — the three real causes

Before reaching for any tool, work out which of these is actually happening, because two of them have a thirty-second fix:

1. Your compose window is in plain text mode. Gmail can be switched to plain text, and in that mode it discards all formatting on paste — no borders, no bold, nothing. Check the three-dot menu at the bottom right of the compose window: if "Plain text mode" is ticked, untick it and paste again. This is the single most common cause and it is not a tooling problem at all.
2. The styling Excel copies is not styling email keeps. Excel puts a stylesheet and Microsoft-specific markup on the clipboard. Gmail strips <style> blocks entirely; Outlook renders through Word's engine and ignores most modern CSS. Only styling written directly onto each cell survives — which is what the tool above produces.
3. You are pasting into a field that was never rich text — a Teams or Slack message box, a form field, a plain-text signature editor. No amount of formatting survives that.

The "paste through Word" method, and when it fails

The most-repeated advice in Gmail's own community threads is: copy from Excel, paste into Microsoft Word, then copy from Word into Gmail. It works, because Word rewrites the clipboard content into simpler HTML on the way through.

Its limitations, stated honestly:

• You need Word installed — not an option on a Chromebook or a locked-down work machine.
• Word often adds its own spacing and font quirks, which then travel into the email.
• It is three applications and four clipboard operations to send one table.
• You get whatever Word decides — no control over borders, shading or the header row.

If Word is to hand and the table is simple, use it. The tool above exists for everything else.

Troubleshooting: what went wrong

The Google Sheets workaround — and why you don't need it

The advice you will find in most tutorials is: paste your Excel range into Google Sheets, copy it again from there, then paste into Gmail, because Sheets happens to emit simpler HTML. It works, but it costs you three extra steps, needs a Google account, puts your data through a third service, and still gives you no control over the styling. Pasting the same cells into the box above skips all of that and lets you choose the look.

How to paste a table into Gmail

1. In Excel or Google Sheets, select your range and copy it (Ctrl+C / Cmd+C).
2. Paste into the box above. The preview updates as you type.
3. Pick a style and confirm whether your first row is a header.
4. Click Copy for email.
5. In Gmail, click into the message body and paste (Ctrl+V / Cmd+V).

How to paste a table into Outlook

1. Follow steps 1–4 above.
2. In Outlook, click into the message body and paste normally.
3. If Outlook alters the spacing, use Paste Special → Keep Source Formatting, or paste into the web version of Outlook, which handles inline CSS more faithfully than the desktop app.

Gmail vs Outlook vs Apple Mail — what actually survives

This is why the generated table uses inline styles on every cell and avoids <style> blocks entirely — it is the intersection that works everywhere.

Getting the raw HTML instead

If you are building a newsletter, a template, or pasting into a CMS, use Copy HTML to get the markup itself rather than a formatted table. The output is self-contained: no external stylesheet, no classes, nothing to link to.

Tips for tables that read well in email

• Keep it under about six columns — anything wider forces horizontal scrolling on phones.
• Right-align numbers manually before copying if precision matters to the reader.
• Choose "Striped rows" for long tables; the alternating background helps the eye track across.
• Very large tables are better attached as a file — most recipients will not read past ~20 rows in an email body.