Essentially, you have four options for including Excel data in a Word document. You can simply type the required data in, you can copy and paste the data in, you can insert (embed) the data into your document, or you can link the Excel data to your document.

 

For anything but trivial amounts of data, the first option becomes impractical. You can do a simple copy and paste to include the data, but this will limit your options when it comes to later formatting, updating or modification of the data.

 

Your two best options are to Insert (embed) the data into your word document, or link the Excel data to your document.

 

Inserting an Excel range or worksheet will increase the size of your Word document. Depending on how much data you want to include, the size increase can be significant. Moreover, updates or changes to the data in the source worksheet will not be automatically updated in the Word document. On the other hand, the Excel data can still be edited with Excel, even though it is embedded in a Word document. Your document will also be more portable, because it does not need to maintain a link to the original Excel file.

 

To insert Excel data into a Word document, open both the document and the worksheet, and select the range of data in Excel, that you want to include in the document.

 

The next step is to right click and select copy from the drop down menu. This will surround the selected range with a light and dark dotted border.

  

When you have selected and copied the worksheet data, activate the Word document and place your curser at the position in the document where you want to insert the Excel data.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Next, choose Edit->Paste Special form the menu bar in Word.

 

 

  

 

When you see the paste special dialogue box in Word, click the Paste radio button, and select Microsoft Office Excel Worksheet Object, from the list of options. You can also choose Formatted Text as an option, the advantages and disadvantages of which will be discussed later.

 

When you are finished, click OK.

 

 

The Excel range is now inserted into the word document.

 

If you want to insert an entire worksheet into a word document, click the small rectangle where the column letters and row numbers meet.

 

This will highlight the entire worksheet with blue shading. Just right click and choose copy from the drop menu, and the worksheet will be copied to the clipboard. Put your curser in the Word document, at an appropriate location, and choose Edit->Paste Special from the Word menu bar as before. In the Paste Special dialogue box, select the paste radio button, then select the Microsoft Office Excel Worksheet Object option from the list and click OK. The entire worksheet will be pasted into your Word document.

 

Keep in mind that an entire worksheet is to large to be displayed properly in a Word document. If you paste the data as a worksheet object, Word will limit its size to a single page. For this reason, the worksheet may appear as a gray or grid lined block in your document. This does not mean that the data is unavailable.

 

 If the entire worksheet appears as a vague grey shape in your word document, right click on the gray area and choose Worksheet Object->Edit, to edit the data, or Worksheet Object->Open, to open the data in a full Excel environment. To remove the gray area where the worksheet is inserted, right click on the area and select Worksheet Object->Convert.

 

 

This will display a Convert dialogue box.

 

 

In the convert dialogue box, put a check in the display as Icon box, (the convert to radio button should be selected by default).

 

 

 

 

 

 

The embedded worksheet will now be displayed as an Excel Icon in your word document. When you click on it, the worksheet will open in Excel.

 

 

 

 

Clicking on the Excel icon inside the word document will display the worksheet in Excel.

 

You can avoid many of the size problems with displaying an entire worksheet as an embedded object, by selecting the Formatted Text option from the paste special dialogue box rather than the Microsoft Office Excel Worksheet Object option. The formatted text option allows Word to display the worksheet data in Word tables that can span several pages. The problem is that you must edit the data in Word. If you insert the data as a worksheet object, you can edit it in a full Excel environment.

 

There is still another way to insert Excel data into a Word document. With this method, you do not need to open both applications.

 

From within word, choose Insert ->Object from the menu bar to display the Object dialogue box.

  

Select Microsoft Excel Worksheet from the options list and click the create from file tab. (The Create new tab is for inserting empty worksheet objects).

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Under the Create from file tab, you can browse to the file you want to insert.

 

If the Link to file check box is checked, the data will be linked to the Excel source file and the document will be updated automatically. If you leave the checkbox empty, the file you select will be inserted into the word document, and will not receive updates from the source Excel file.

 

Notice that you can display the file as an icon in your document if you wish.

 

When you are finished with the Object dialogue, click OK to insert the Excel data.