Good morning! To say I’m a novice at HTML would be an overstatement, and I find tables to be the most exacerbating of beasts to understand and wrangle - particularly formatting within tables. I think it’s because site-wide and custom CSS code overrides the HTML code in your editor, but there’s likely more to it than that. 

Regardless, I found a workaround that get’s me 95% or more of what I’m looking for every time, by using an online Table Generator to create and plug in the HTML w/CSS that I need. With the CSS included, it seems to take precedence over site CSS that may be changing your final viewing experience.

In broad strokes, it looks like this:

1. Create and format your table just how you want it in Excel (not the greatest formatting tool out there, but works for most needs).
2. Copy the cells and paste them where instructed in HTML Tables generator – TablesGenerator.com (there are probably other tools, I found this first and it’s been working well for me). 
   Pro tip: Use Ctrl-V to paste and keep yur source formatting, not the right-click menu paste.
3. You can do any final formatting fixes in the Table Generator. I find it tends to throw some random spacing in to some cells, but I find that a minor annoyance compared to all the time I’m saving. 
4. Click Generate (include CSS), and then click Copy to Clipboard to copy all of the table code.
5. Paste the code where needed in your HTML editor. 
6. Save the Excel file as your Master doc for when you need to make later updates.

I hope this is helpful, and if there are real HTML aficionados who read this and can improve on it, I’d love to know more myself! 

Jim 

@Jim Garland We can definitely try that.  Ti support told me that it has to do with our custom font.  PC users can see the bold by 80 percent of our internal audience at least, is on a Mac.  We are going to also work with our design team to see what they know about our custom Barlow font and then I will try your idea.  This is awesome.  Thanks for making time!

@Jim Garland I just tested bold outside of a table and bold in general is a no go.  Again support thinks this is related to our font somehow.  Still a mystery but love your resource!