When I try to copy&paste a table from a web page ...

Perhaps you should use in word, Edit, paste special, choose unformatted text and then choose Table, convert text to table and you should be OK.

i hope that works

Copying and pasting tables isn't somthing that always works. A little trick that somtimes works is copying from the web page not only the table but a little of the content of the page above of the table too. 

when you paste it you get a little "junk" you have to remove but, hey, at least you have the table in the excel with all its cells in place :)

cheers

do you need the table to appear in excel you could always screen dump the image into word but you would not be able to edit the contents - I suppose it depends what you want to do with the content once you have pasted it?

What browser do you use? There's an extension for Firefox that greatly improves copying and pasting of tables.