Insert Excel Worksheet Cells: MS Word

Dennis Faas's picture

You don't have to have two separate pages, one from MS Word and one from Excel, to display text and numbers in your document. This is because Word and Excel are built to work together, so that you can seamlessly bring your data from Excel into Word.

Using Excel to generate your numeric data opens the door to more sophisticated calculations and numeric formatting. You can use all the features of Excel for making calculations, rather than being limited to the few formulas available on Word's Table | Formula command.

Copying between Excel and Word uses the same techniques you know already:

  1. Open both the document in Word and the worksheet in Excel.
     
  2. In Excel, select the cells and copy them. To do this, drag across the cells with the plus-sign mouse pointer, and then click the Copy button.
     
  3. Click the document's button on the taskbar to switch to Word.
     
  4. Place the insertion point where you want to insert the copied worksheet cells.
     
  5. Paste (click the Paste button, press Ctrl+V or choose Edit | Paste Cells).

The contents of the cells are inserted into a Word table with the same dimensions as the original Excel worksheet. Any values calculated by formulas in Excel are converted into actual numbers. The text and numbers retain their formatting, and the column widths are the same as those in the original worksheet.

Instead of using the Paste command, you can use Edit | Paste Special to have more control over how the worksheet is pasted. Instead of pasting it as a table, this command allows you to paste it as a picture, as HTML, as an Excel worksheet object, or as formatted and unformatted text.

Modify Worksheet Data in a Table

When worksheet cells are pasted from Excel into a document, they become cells in a Word table. To modify them, you use the commands on Word's Table menu and the buttons on the Tables and Borders toolbar.

  • Insert columns and rows or merge and split cells.
     
  • Control the dimensions of columns and rows.
     
  • Align text and numbers within the cells.
     
  • Format the borders and shading or use Table AutoFormat.
     
  • Size and move the table on the page, and wrap text around it.

The text, numbers and values brought in from Excel become normal text within a Word table -- they have no further connection to Excel. You can modify the table as you normally would.

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