MS Word: Using a Spreadsheet Within a Document
On more than one occasion, I’ve found that within a document I’ve needed to present data that really should be set up in Excel.
Don’t get me wrong, Word’s tables are great, but when it comes to calculations and numeric data displays, Excel wins hands down.
Some might ask why I don’t simply write the document within Excel so that the spreadsheet element is already there…
My reply would have to be “No way!” The word processing portion of my document will be much more polished and easier to assemble in Word.
No, I definitely want Excel capabilities inside Word, and not the other way around.
Fortunately, the ability to do just that is in Word. It’s just a matter of knowing where to find it.
Take a look on the Insert tab of the Ribbon, Table button.
See it at the bottom?
Yep, that says “Excel Spreadsheet“
Choose it and you’ll see this inserted into your document at the current location of the cursor.
Instantly, you have everything right here inside of Word that you need to get the data presentation you want.
The Ribbon flipped over to the Excel Ribbon, you have scroll bars to move through the spreadsheet and even tabs for multiple sheets (granted only one would display at a time but you could hide information in the bottom one that’s used to create your display in the top one).
Changing the size of the displayed portion of your worksheet is as easy as dragging the handles located around it when the spreadsheet is active.
When you’re done and ready to return to Word, simply click outside of the spreadsheet.
Whatever you had displayed when you clicked out of the spreadsheet it what you’ll see so be sure to re-size and have Excel object showing exactly the information you need to display.
Need to edit the spreadsheet?
No problem. Double-click on the spreadsheet and it will open again giving you full access to edit as though you were using Excel instead of Word.
The data power of Excel is available to you without ever leaving Word… very nice!
~ April
How do you add an Excel spreadsheet to Word using version 2003?
SUPER SUPER TIP. . .I knew this once long ago, but totally forgot about it.
Will be putting it to good use starting tomorrow.
Thanks so much !!
I have kinda done this with cut and paste with less than great results. This is great, I will start doing this right away, so it will stick in my mind. Thank you!
You can accomplish nearly the same thing in Word 2000 by choosing “Insert|Object” and then selecting Microsoft Excel Worksheet. Word 2003 probably has something similar.
If you use the same Excel table in a document, how do you link them together so you only have to change them once?