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So now that you've discovered the calculation
capabilities of Excel, you have been merrily making
tables and graphs that reflect the success of your
business. Now you'd like to share the information with
others in the form of an attractive report, but you're
stymied by the question "How do I bring my Excel data
into a Word document?" Well, this article tells you how.
Copy and Paste
The easiest way to bring Excel data into Word is
using the Windows clipboard. You select the data
(or graph) in Excel and copy it to the clipboard
by choosing Edit|Copy. Then you paste it from the
clipboard into Word by choosing Edit|Paste. When
you copy an Excel spreadsheet, the result you see
in Word looks and behaves like a Word table—in
fact, when you pasted it, Word converted it to a table.
Well, okay, that's fine, but what if you want
the data in Word to reflect any changes you make later
in the original Excel data? Sounds like magic, but
it's not. Start over by clicking the Undo button in
Word to undo the Paste step. Now go back to Excel
and copy the data again. This time, in Word choose Edit|Paste Special. Figure 1 shows the dialog
box from Word 2000; if you're using an earlier version
of Word, what you see may differ slightly, but is
essentially the same.
In the dialog box, you can choose from a number of different formats. The highlighted selection,
Formatted Text, converts a spreadsheet into a
Word table. Microsoft Excel Worksheet Object
creates what's called an OLE object, which embeds the
Excel worksheet in the Word document. When you double-click the object, you work in the Excel
environment within the Word document. You have access to all the Excel menus. An OLE object is
limited in size to a single Word document page, but
Excel data that's converted to a Word table can span
pages. To link the table to the original data, click the
Paste link option (it's on the left in the dialog box).
You also can bring the spreadsheet into your
document as a picture. This feature is useful if you
have problems with the colors or fonts in the graphs
you want to display in Word. Using a picture
format tends to keep colors more stable. Pasting
as unformatted text inserts the data in tab-delimited
format (each cell's content is separated from the next
by a tab character; a paragraph ends each row).
Most people use this format when they link the content
of a single Excel cell into a Word document's text.
Insert an Object
You can incorporate Excel tables and graphs
into Word in other ways. Clicking the Excel
Worksheet button on the toolbar or choosing
Insert|Object (Figure 2) lets you embed a new spreadsheet or
chart OLE object directly in Word, instead of having
to create it first as a separate file. You also can
select and import from an existing file using the
Create from File tab. I prefer to use Edit|Paste
Special, however, because then I can specify
exactly what I want to include from the file.
Resizing an Excel Object
Resizing an Excel OLE object in Word 97 or
2000, whether spreadsheet or chart, often yields an
unsatisfactory result; the fonts tend to become distorted.
It can be ugly, so it's better to adjust the size in Excel.
Behind the Scenes: Change the Link
Sometimes your table in Excel may get larger
after you've already linked it into Word. You can,
of course, delete the table in Word and copy and
paste again. Or you can just edit the link in Word.
The first thing you need to do is make sure the
link is available for editing. If you inserted the Excel
data as an OLE Object in Word 97 or Word 2000, it
may be "floating" over the text. If you click the object
and see white boxes at the corners and sides, then it
is floating. A floating object's link cannot be edited,
it must first be brought in-line with the text. To do
this, you right-click the object and select Format. In
Word 97 the Position tab has a Float over text
checkbox that you deactivate. In Word 2000, you need to
click the In line with text option on the Layout tab.
Users of earlier versions of Word won't have this problem.
Now press Alt+F9 to display the field codes. If you've never worked with Word's field codes
before, this task may seem confusing at first, but just
relax and take a moment to get used to fields. Field
codes are contained in a special pair of braces: { }.
Between the braces are the instructions Word uses to
do useful things, like calculate the page number or
the current date. In this case, if you used Edit|Paste
Special with Paste Link, you'll see a LINK field.
After the field name is the type of application the field
is linked to (Excel spreadsheet). Next is the
complete path to the file that contains the information,
followed by the range in the workbook. This last
part (Sheet1!R1C1:R5C6) is what you need to change
if you want to show more or less of your Excel table
in Word. For example, in Figure 3, the table in Excel
is on the worksheet named Sheet 1. It starts in cell
A1 (R=row and C=column, so Row 1Column 1 is cell A1). It extends to cell F5 (which is Row 5,
Column 6). By changing these row and column numbers,
you can tell Word to show different parts of the
spreadsheet.
Once you're finished, press Alt+F9 again to
switch back to the field result display. Press F9 to force
the link to update. And voilà! Now you know the
basics of integrating your Excel information in Word.
Figure 1. In the Paste Special dialog box, you choose the
format of the item you insert into your document.
Figure 2. Insert an Excel worksheet or chart as an object,
directly in the Word document, by choosing Insert|Object.
Figure 3. The field code behind a linked Excel object.
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