It is now formatted as a markdown table. Maybe even with column alignment markers.
Proposed solution
Add a handler for table like data that converts the table into a (nicely formatted?) markdown table.
Right now it just pastes the text version.
This keeps the storage of obsidian pure markdown, and seems to be a nice place to add the interface.
Additional sources can be Open Office, .csv files, etc.
The reverse (copy md table to paste into excel) already works.
Maybe copy-paste into a finder or file manager pane could create a csv file there but I’ve not seen that before.
Have a look at https://www.convertcsv.com/csv-to-markdown.htm - as an interim workaround, this does what you’re asking (try copying cells from Excel or Google Sheets and pasting them in the top box). Also nicely illustrates how it should work in Obsidian.
I’d love to see this at some point as well. Really helps with scientific tasks.
Thanks @den for the Typora tip. I’m using Typora for image handling as well, since it pastes images without spaces in the filename. Makes markdown references much simpler
I learned the other day that you can drop an spreadsheet file right into Obsidian and it’ll make a working link that opens it. Not super deep integration, but it’s quite nice.
Can’t you just skip the Obsidian step here? If you open the final file in Typora and do the conversion there, does Obsidian even need to enter the equation?
This is one of the main advantages of Obsidian. It has a portable and interoperable storage format, so you can easily combine it with tools that were designed to work well for a specific task.
For instance, I would not expect Obsidian to ever have the text manipulation power of something like Sublime Text, but since it can open the same files, they can work together in harmony.
Is there any possibility/plan for this to be a thing in future I understand the issue with manipulating data in obsidian but copying existing data into a markdown table is simple input into markdown and should be a task obsidian is specifically suited to as a markdown editor.
This seems like a basic function for working with tables not sure why it’s not on the to do list unless I am mistaken? I would prefer not to interrupt my workflow by having to open up another program. Maybe a setting you can toggle on and off? Maybe a right click option? Have to imagine 90% of the time when you are pasting comma separated or tab separated text it would be useful if obsidian converted into a table for you
before i go further, i also want to +1 this feature (to baked into core obsidian). on that note, there’s a plugin that serve the very feature.
p:/s i think some of you probably already aware of the this plugin, but sharing this for the benefit of others (since it’s not yet mention in this thread).
Doubtful that formulas will ever work fully. We’re going talking about decades of development. Maybe some basic formulas could work some day. But I’m still doubtful.
Maybe you what to embed a Google Spreadsheet as an iframe into your markdown document