Question: A simple copy paste of table from Microsoft Excel in Gmail email removes all table formatting. Like most I was also looking at solutions and tried different things (like pasting table first in Word, Google Sheet, etc. and then copying from there and pasting in Gmail email).

A simple solution to above problem is to use "Format as Table" option in Microsoft Excel. Make further necessary changes in formatting as required and then copy the table and paste it in the Gmail email body. Done!

Answer: 
This is not a feature of cloud-init (outside of reporting, as @falcojr noted).

Your question has already been answered by others, so I'll share some ancillary information related to how one can measure (and optimize) the performance of cloud-init. This won't get you your status bar, but maybe it will get you a faster boot time (which is often a motivation behind this kind of question).

**Performance Tools**:

If you are interested in better understanding or optimizing cloud-init boot time, there are some utilities you might consider.

**[cloud-init analyze](https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/topics/analyze.html?highlight=analyze#analyze)**: similar to systemd-analyze, it will show a breakdown of what cloud-init spent time on

**[systemd-analyze](https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-analyze.html)**: shows a breakdown of what systemd spent time on

**Optimization Strategy**:

When trying to optimize a system boot time, I typically start by running `systemd-analyze blame`, looking at the most time-consuming service, and then asking myself: a) Do I need it? and if I do b) Is there anything I can do to make this faster?

Disable/reconfigure, rinse and repeat. If you don't know, don't guess. Do your research before gutting your OS.

Same with `cloud-init analyze blame`.

Typically there are only a few services worth looking at before you are considering services/modules that are under a second. I've run this a few times on my own servers and I typically find things like package install and updates as well as other network/disk intensive tasks take up the most time. It's easy to accidentally write a config that "works", but is also slow.

**Quick Example:**

I've seen some cloud-configs out there that do things like:

```yaml
runcmd:
  - "apt-get install git"
  - "apt-get install neovim"

```

which won't perform nearly as well as the following (or the [builtin module](https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/topics/modules.html#apt-configure)):

```yaml
runcmd:
  - "apt-get install git neovim"

```

On a quick GCP test these two had a 3 second delta for me.

This example is simple, but since I've seen blog posts doing the former, my guess is this section might help somebody at some point :-)
My suggestion comes from these pages:

* <https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/topics/faq.html>
* <https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/topics/boot.html>
* <https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/topics/examples.html>

Roughly it is:

* Create a bootcmd ( <https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/topics/examples.html#run-commands-on-first-boot> ) that polls until the network is up, then downloads and executes the next stage.
* The second stage actively watches and processes log data (e.g. from: /var/log/cloud-init.log ) to evaluate where in the install process you are.
* At that point, you can start sending updates using 'curl' or whatever tool makes the most sense as you see lines show up in the log files.

Potential challenges:

* Requires programming.
* Requires understanding the log files.

I suggest performing a few test installs and sending each line as it shows up (e.g. using 'curl') to get a sense what a 'normal' install looks like, finding some key points, and using those points to trigger your updates.