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    This is a tricky one. I certainly see the value and we've played around with this when building the new editor. Handling pastes - especially from Office apps - is a wild ride. You have to deal with a lot of inconsistencies and edge cases depending on the source you copied from (including browser differences). On top of that: Markdown tables only support a limited subset of what Excel tables can do - no merged cells, no resizing, no custom formatting. I haven't found a good way to handle those cases in a way that's not confusing for a user yet, but I'm all ears! Commented Dec 8, 2020 at 19:40
  • 4
    The GitLab MR looks quite simple - even a very basic support is better than none. IMO even if you strip all formatting, as long as I can paste a table it's a win. It might not fit in with how SE works, but a simple implementation with the option to improve over time is better than getting it perfect - which you are right, is very hard. I believe I'm not a typical user, but as long as it's predictable even imperfect behavior is fine. What I describe here is probably best for the more technical sites though... Commented Dec 8, 2020 at 19:48
  • While not rally being viable for the average, non-technical user who will just complain that it doesn't work. Commented Dec 8, 2020 at 19:48
  • (and I almost started a rant why I dislike Markdown... no multi line table rows is one of those reasons, although not viable for you to solve) Commented Dec 8, 2020 at 19:51
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    GitLab's implementation indeed looks tempting, they're relying on the plain text representation of a copied Excel table (in contrast to the HTML representation which I struggled with in previous attempts). Let me take this for another spin, maybe we can get something in place. Thanks for the pointer, I really appreciate it! Commented Dec 8, 2020 at 20:32
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    Glad to help! I do hope this something comes sooner rather than later ;) Commented Dec 8, 2020 at 20:45
  • Related feature request: meta.stackexchange.com/q/358890/394472 Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 23:40
  • I just posted an answer which shows a quick way to format data from Excel (while we wait for the feature to be implemented). Check it out here: meta.stackexchange.com/a/359176/299995 Commented Jan 4, 2021 at 21:08
  • An easy way to import is with an online tool: tableconvert.com - It imports: Excel URL HTML Markdown CSV JSON LaTeX SQL MediaWiki - Just [Import], click on the generated table, click on Import button that appears, now in the lower window choose your options, and copy, then paste into SE's editor. --- Complicated tables in less than a minute. --- There is more than one online site, but that one works well. --- If you want to test a bunch and add them to your Feedback, as a workaround, BMG. Commented Jul 25, 2021 at 4:00