How to Import an Excel Table into Figma

Figma Design has frames, text, and auto layout, but no table object with rows and columns. When you copy a range from Excel or Google Sheets, the clipboard holds tab-separated text (and sometimes a picture of the cells). Figma pastes whichever it can use, so you end up with a single text layer where columns are separated by tab characters, or an image you can't edit.

You can sometimes fake alignment in that text layer with tab stops, but it breaks as soon as a value gets longer, and you can't give a single cell a background or a border.

FigJam and Figma Slides do have tables. Paste spreadsheet cells onto an empty spot in either one and Figma builds a table with the right number of rows and columns. FigJam tables are limited to 500 cells, so larger sheets get cut off. Both are good for workshops and decks, but they don't give you a table inside a Figma Design file, which is where product screens with data tables get designed.

If you need a reusable table for a design system, build it by hand once. There are two common structures, and the choice affects how widths behave.

• Column-first: each column is a vertical auto layout frame of cells, and the columns sit inside one horizontal auto layout frame. Columns can hug their widest content, so widths line up automatically. This is the easier structure for mockups.
• Row-first: each row is a horizontal auto layout frame, and the rows stack vertically. This matches how HTML tables and row hover states work, but every column needs a fixed width, applied to every cell in that column.

1. Make a cell component: a frame with auto layout, horizontal padding of 12 to 16 px, a fixed height (40 to 48 px is common), and one text layer.
2. Add variants for the states you need, such as Header, Body, Body/Striped, and alignment left or right for numbers.
3. Build one column or one row out of instances, set the cells to Fill container, and add a bottom stroke for the row dividers.
4. Duplicate to the size you need and nest everything in a parent auto layout frame so the table grows as you add rows.

Once the structure exists, you still have to get the values in. Typing 200 cells by hand is where most people give up. There are three realistic options.

• Google Sheets Sync: a long-running community plugin. You name layers with # plus a column header, share the sheet by link, and the plugin fills matching layers from the rows. It works well with a hand-built table component and can re-sync when the sheet changes.
• Figma AI Replace content: available from the Actions menu in Figma Design. It fills selected text with realistic generated values from a prompt. Good for plausible dummy data, but it invents values instead of reading your spreadsheet.
• A table generator plugin: reads the file or pasted cells and creates the whole table, structure included, in one step. Best when you have real data and no table built yet.

If the data is fake anyway, a mock data plugin is often faster than a spreadsheet. See the guide on realistic mock data in Figma.

Our plugin, Table Creator - Import From Excel, is built for this exact job. (It's a different plugin from the older, popular "Table Creator" by Gavin McFarland, which builds tables from scratch but doesn't import data.) It creates the table and styles it in one pass, from three kinds of input.

• Paste Data: paste tab-delimited cells copied from Excel or comma-separated CSV text. The plugin detects which one it is.
• Upload File: .csv, .xlsx, or .xls. It reads the first sheet and takes the row and column counts from the data.
• Google Sheet: paste the sheet URL. The sheet must be viewable by anyone with the link, or published to the web if that fails.

A preview shows the first rows before anything is drawn. Before you click Create Table, set the look in the Cells tab (header and cell backgrounds, alternate row color, stroke color, width and solid or dashed style, cell height, horizontal padding) and the Text tab (font, weight, size, color, alignment for header and body). You can save the setup as a preset or start from a built-in template, which helps when every table in a product needs to look the same.

The output is native Figma frames and text layers, so every cell stays editable. Large imports can take a moment to generate. If you haven't installed a plugin before, here's how to install Figma plugins.

Table Creator also builds empty tables from scratch. Pick the size on a 10 by 10 grid and turn on Use Placeholders to get Header 1 and R1C1 style text, which is handy for wireframes.

• Table in a workshop board or presentation: paste into FigJam or Figma Slides.
• Reusable table component for a design system: build it with auto layout, then fill it with Google Sheets Sync.
• Real data you need on a screen today: import it with Table Creator and adjust the styling.
• Plausible fake data: Figma AI Replace content or a mock data plugin.