In my role as a web site administrator for a few soccer organizations, I have to publish contact lists (on my Windows based computer) for the executive and coaches.  These lists are generated by volunteers and are always in Microsoft Excel.

The challenge that I have, is that Microsoft Excel spreadsheets often don't translate well when being cut and pasted into a HTML based WYSIWYG editor and then published to the Internet. I have seen things like:

• Colours are in the wrong place
• Fonts are not the right size
• Border are all messed up
• Spreadsheet is too wide for the available space
• Sometimes works with IE, but not Firefox
• Browser rendering incompatabilities
• And so on . . .

As a result, I've tried different techniques in order to resolve this; none of which are perfect. These incude:

• Using IE to cut and paste
• Use Open Office 3.X to cut and paste (seems promising)
• Make a screenshot of the contact list
• Convert it to Javascript
•  

I usually need to update the spreadsheet with some additional formatting and information and return it to the author. Hopefully, they'll use that as the 'master' copy and update it and resend it to me with updates in the future.

Use IE to cut and paste

If this works, great. Count yourself lucky. The drawback is that your email addresses may harvestable by spammers.

Use Open Office 3.X

This seems to be promising, but again, your email addresses may harvestable by spammers.

Make a Screenshot

This ensures that your spreadsheet looks the way you want and that your email addresses are not harvestable. It does add significantly to the size of your page, and people can't cut and paste any information from it. It also adds time to the process.

Convert it to Javascript

This makes for the best looking list, but is very time consuming to create and maintain. This has the distinct advantage of being able to obfuscate email addresses while allowing them to be clickable.

I currently use all of these techniques, depending on the situation. It would be nice to hear what others do about this issue.