HTML text to Office table

[msmemory_archive]

O mighty intarweb: Is there a quick way to take data that are in html, laid out visually like a table but actually simple text, and import it into a Word or Excel table, with the data properly separated into table columns? I know several brute force ways, but am I missing a friendly little tool that'll do it quick?

ETA: I'm trying to take this data (http://op.eastkingdom.org/Awards/Pelican.html and Laurel.html and Chivalry.html) and put it into a single grand date-sortable table. I figure this is a nice little project for a snowy Saturday morning.

Comments

[dryfoo.livejournal.com]

I do this all the time now. I use Emacs (since I have that downloaded and installed on chip-sets in my fingers) and create on-the-fly macros to produce Delimited text files. Some advanced tricks include:

-- having three undefined but named macros (m0, m1, m2) already assigned as keystroke commands and available for on-the-fly redefinition

-- using the pipe '|' as field delimited, since it's hardly ever used in the kind of datafiles you're talking about. Of course you have to search and test first.

Then Excel has a command to read in text files. Make sure to select *all* the fields and define them as Text (not "General") at the appropriate step, or various kinds of data will get effed up.