Outlook screws up pasted Excel objects
June 28, 2011 3:02 PM Subscribe
Why does Outlook render spreadsheet data pasted into an email so shittily, and how can I avoid this?
I paste a block of Excel cells into an email. It looks great. I press send. In my sent items, and presumably in everyone's inbox, the pasted-in Excel object has all the hi-tech graphical resoution of an early 1980s model TRS-80. Presumably, it is compressing the image too much. How can I avoid this transformation of my lovely Excel object into a hideous mess?!
I paste a block of Excel cells into an email. It looks great. I press send. In my sent items, and presumably in everyone's inbox, the pasted-in Excel object has all the hi-tech graphical resoution of an early 1980s model TRS-80. Presumably, it is compressing the image too much. How can I avoid this transformation of my lovely Excel object into a hideous mess?!
Favorited for the use of the word 'shittily'--never heard that before. I love it! :)
I know exactly what you mean and have unfortunately found no way around it other than sending the file as an attachment.
posted by mhm407 at 3:51 PM on June 28, 2011
I know exactly what you mean and have unfortunately found no way around it other than sending the file as an attachment.
posted by mhm407 at 3:51 PM on June 28, 2011
I've seen this. Sometimes pasting into notepad and copying out of there will work for me.
posted by notned at 3:52 PM on June 28, 2011
posted by notned at 3:52 PM on June 28, 2011
Best answer: Is there a reason you're not just exporting to an image, PDF or keeping it in native Excel format?
posted by turkeyphant at 4:35 PM on June 28, 2011
posted by turkeyphant at 4:35 PM on June 28, 2011
Yes, first choice: attach it, second choice: paste to notepad first and then into the email.
Email kinda sucks for formatting anything because almost all mail clients render differently.
posted by minx at 5:33 PM on June 28, 2011 [1 favorite]
Email kinda sucks for formatting anything because almost all mail clients render differently.
posted by minx at 5:33 PM on June 28, 2011 [1 favorite]
Best answer: What email reader are the recipients using? What read settings are they using? For example, do they have their email reader set to display emails as HTML or plain text, or to use the sender's fonts, or to use their own default font choices?
All of the above and more will affect how email is viewed. Pasting in Excel stuff only adds more shit to wade through.
If your recipients don't need to use the Excel portion of your emails (e.g., edited in a response to you, or pasted into something else), then just send them a screen cap. Pro tip - if you're using Windows 7, there is a built-in screen cap tool called the Snipping Tool that works really well for this kind of thing.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 6:05 PM on June 28, 2011
All of the above and more will affect how email is viewed. Pasting in Excel stuff only adds more shit to wade through.
If your recipients don't need to use the Excel portion of your emails (e.g., edited in a response to you, or pasted into something else), then just send them a screen cap. Pro tip - if you're using Windows 7, there is a built-in screen cap tool called the Snipping Tool that works really well for this kind of thing.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 6:05 PM on June 28, 2011
Oh, one more thing. When you're about to paste your Excel data, do you use the Paste Options button? If you have a new mail message open in Outlook, Paste Options are available on the Message tab, the first icon in the ribbon. Click under the word "Paste", and a menu opens that lets you paste using the source formatting from Excel, using whatever mail message formatting you have set up in Outlook, or as plain text. Try the various options to see if it improves anything.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 6:08 PM on June 28, 2011
posted by SuperSquirrel at 6:08 PM on June 28, 2011
Does Outlook have some kind of Paste Special? When I am pasting stuff from Excel to Notes, just doing a normal paste gives me junk. Instead I do a Paste and select RTF format. That gives me nice table cells that travel well since I assume they convert into HTML tables easily. It's very easy for the recipient to copy them back out to Excel too.
Pasting to notepad is similar in that it works like Paste Special > Plain Text. But the RTF works better in my experience.
posted by smackfu at 6:32 PM on June 28, 2011
Pasting to notepad is similar in that it works like Paste Special > Plain Text. But the RTF works better in my experience.
posted by smackfu at 6:32 PM on June 28, 2011
My technologically enthusiastic but largely ignorant boss wants regular extracts of from Excel, and I get around his issues by copy-pasting to a .doc and attaching it.
Pros:
Prints off like a boss.
Unlike screen caps, text can be edited.
Takes all of two minutes.
Can be shared around with minimal fuss.
Displays the same no matter what mail client is used.
Cons:
All plaintext, any formulas used to generate info no longer work.
Takes two whole frikking minutes.
posted by Jilder at 2:20 AM on June 29, 2011
Pros:
Prints off like a boss.
Unlike screen caps, text can be edited.
Takes all of two minutes.
Can be shared around with minimal fuss.
Displays the same no matter what mail client is used.
Cons:
All plaintext, any formulas used to generate info no longer work.
Takes two whole frikking minutes.
posted by Jilder at 2:20 AM on June 29, 2011
Email is a plain text protocol. It does not support formatted text.
posted by mr_roboto at 9:59 AM on June 29, 2011
posted by mr_roboto at 9:59 AM on June 29, 2011
That's just silliness. RFC 2045 extends email to support MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) and is 15 years old at this point.
posted by smackfu at 10:16 AM on June 29, 2011
posted by smackfu at 10:16 AM on June 29, 2011
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posted by dfriedman at 3:14 PM on June 28, 2011