Frequently Asked Questions (for Developers)

Excel Interactive View is not properly converting my table. How can I fix this?

The easiest way to make sure Interactive View converts your table properly is to use standard HTML Table attributes. For instance, you can define a header row by wrapping the appropriate <TR> tag with a <THEAD> tag:

    <table>
      <thead>
        <tr>
          <td>Color</td>
          <td>Food 1</td>
          <td>Food 2</td>
        </tr>
      </thead>
      <tr>
        <td>Green</td>
        <td>Eggs</td>
        <td>Ham</td>
      </tr>
    </table>
  

This way, Interactive View will know where your header row is. For more information about how to define areas of your HTML table, check out the W3C Documentation.

How can I make Excel Interactive View charts better?

Here are some helpful hints for getting the most out of the charts in the Interactive View:

• Make sure numerical units are consistent down a column. This way Interactive View can detect that the numbers are similar.
• Interactive View will look for a string column to use as labels - if you want a particular column to be used as labels for a chart, you should place it at the beginning of the table.

When I add Interactive View to my page, I get an error about only "Secure Content" being displayed, and the button doesn't show up. How do I fix this?

This occurs when the http protocol is mismatched ("http" mixed with "https"). If your page uses https, you will need to modify the script tag after copying it from the configuration page to use "https" instead of "http":

Before:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://r.office.microsoft.com/r/rlidExcelButton?v=1&kip=1"></script>

After:

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://r.office.microsoft.com/r/rlidExcelButton?v=1&kip=1"></script>