Importing Excel Data Into Word

Friday, October 7th, 2005 by Diana Huggins at 8:24pm
19 Responses (Add)

One of the most common questions I hear when doing Office training is “How do I import data from Excel into my Word document?” Well there are a few different ways in which you can import data from Excel. The method you use will depend on whether or not you want the Excel data to retain its functionality in Word.

If you want, you can simply copy and paste your data into Word. When you do this, all the Excel data is converted into a Word table. So the Excel data does not retain any of its functionality once it’s pasted into word.

To perform this simple replication of data, use the steps outlined below:

Open your Word document.
Open your Excel spreadsheet.
Within Excel, select the cells you want to copy into Word.
From the Edit menu, click Copy.
Switch to your Word document.
Place the insertion point where you want the data.
From the Edit menu, click Paste.

You can then modify the data in the table as you would any other Word table.

Back to the common questions I hear “How do I import data from Excel into my document?” well there is another method you can use if you want to retain the use of Excel tools to edit the data that is in Word.

If you want to be able to use Excel tools to make changes to the Excel data in Word, you can use the Paste Special command. When you use this command, the Excel data is embedded as a Microsoft Worksheet object.

To use the Paste Special command:

Open your Word document.
Open your Excel spreadsheet.
Within Excel, select the cells you want to copy into Word.
From the Edit menu, click Copy.
Switch back to your Word document.
Place the insertion point where you want the data placed.
From the Edit menu, click Paste Special.
Select Microsoft Excel Worksheet Object.
Click OK.

When you double click the table that you inserted into your Word document, you will notice that it now retains its Excel functionality.

Finally, there is a third method you can use. If you want to be able to edit that data within Excel and have those changes updated automatically in Word, you can do so by creating a dynamic link.

Open your Word document.
Open your Excel spreadsheet.
With Excel, select the cells you want to copy into Word.
From the Edit menu, click Copy.
Switch back to your Word document.
Place the insertion point where you want the data placed.
From the Edit menu, click Paste Special.
Select Microsoft Excel Worksheet Object.
Select the Paste Link radio button.
Click OK.

Now when you double click the table in Word, the worksheet will open in Excel.

19 Comments

Pravin

February 26th, 2007
at 10:34pm

Hello,

I have a porblem with mail merging cells from Excell to word 2003. The cells has around 10 line and more, but after mail meging only the first few line merge. Why is this problem ? can you help me on this ?

Marirose

May 31st, 2007
at 6:30am

Can I take a table from an existing Word document created by another person and transfer it to an Excel spreadsheet to use.

Kristen Johnson

August 24th, 2007
at 9:32am

How do I get rid of the “image” lines after copying a document from excel into word?

Preeti

September 19th, 2007
at 4:05am

I learned much more things, how to create lables………..
I wanted to know how to use vlookup fuction into excel data?

Justin

January 16th, 2008
at 9:55pm

Hi, here is a question (and a challenge!) for you:

Say I have a paragraph of text in a Word 2003 (or whatever) document and I want to reference a specific cell in an Excel document. Like this for example:

“We have sold 450 widgets this year.”

where 450 is the contents of a cell in a spreadsheet. Say Test.xls, Sheet1, cell A1.

Is there any way to do it? So if I have the Word document and spreadsheet open at the same time it will change the value in the Word document if I change the value in the spreadsheet?

my guess is that it is not possible….

Cheers
Justin

Phil Gamble

February 22nd, 2008
at 10:56am

have office 2000, and am attempting mail merge from an excel spreadsheet. When I get to the menu to selct the source (excel) file, the source file is not listed, wheather on the desktop, or in My documents. When I close out word and mail merge, and go to my documents it is there!! any help?? Phil

Web Design Denver

March 12th, 2008
at 6:12pm

Thanks for the tips. Gotta love a good first result from google. I’ve used this tip countlessly over the past few days since I’ve learned it.

Sanil

April 19th, 2008
at 7:51am

Thanx a lot it works. Has been lookin for this all the while!! :)

HBofinger

June 19th, 2008
at 11:19am

Hi,

I nearly lost my voice screaming again at Microjunk. I am working on a large document, so having Excel object for every table would make the document much too large. So I like to copy the table from Excel to Word, and have it go in as HTML or whatever Word decides to convert it to.

However, even though I format the table carefully in Excel, I keep on getting spaces in the new Word table, making all rows deeper than they should be. My workaround is to then do a search and replace for all spaces, replacing any spaces found with nothing. The table looks normal again.

Since this is intermittent, what am I missing? Is there something wrong with the Excel table that creates these blank spaces? Or is it Microjunk’s internal conversion routine?

Dotsterhendu

August 7th, 2008
at 2:45pm

Justin:

Follow the same instructions as the author has provided to paste in an Excel Object but simply copy the cell containing the “450″.

Then, in Word:
Edit -> Paste Special -> Unformatted Text (make sure to select the “paste link” option). Now when you have both the Word and Excel documents open, F9 will update the text in your Word document as you change the numbers in your Excel.

John Humbert

November 5th, 2008
at 2:40am

I have 2 PC both with office ‘03 SP3, of course one functions normal and the other has a glich, here it is…. Copy text and picture from excel and paste special to word. the picture is in color, but when it is pasted into word it appears in black and white. both PC have the same setup, and have a B&W laser and a color inkjet printer.
On one PC it works fine no matter which printer is selected as the default, on the other it will only work when the color printer is selected as default. I know that MS will automatically change the color on text when you copy and paste and it “sees” that you have a B&W printer installed. Any thoughts?

Abraham Hailu

November 20th, 2008
at 5:56am

Is it possible to create view in MS-Excel? E.g. to Show fields from different sheets.
Thanks

Wassim

February 25th, 2009
at 12:01pm

I think you guys provide great professional IT Help over this website.

In one minute, i solved a problem in my spreadsheet and it was quick and simple.

GREAT WORK GUYS
Keep it up
Thank you

More Sonal

July 14th, 2009
at 12:11am

how to import a fpxpro file to excel
can anybody give me the solution

Jan K., The Proofer

October 4th, 2009
at 2:05am

I had no clue it was so easy to convert an Excel spreadsheet to a table in Word. THANK YOU!!!!

Kris K.

October 28th, 2009
at 12:46pm

I want to paste an excel table in word, but I do not want all the excel cell lines (boxes) to show-up, only the outlines that I created in excel. I want my table to look like it was directly printed from excel. Can you help me, please?!

Would I have to export the table into a pdf. first?

Any help would be most appreciated :)

Please can anybody Help me…….

Lars Hjørnevik

January 28th, 2010
at 2:24am

Thank you, this was very usefull!!

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