Have you ever had to insert an Excel sheet into a Word document and link them so that when the main Excel sheet is refreshed, the values ??in the Word document will automatically update too?
Well, there are actually several ways to insert an Excel spreadsheet into Word: linking, embedding and creating a new one. Regardless of whether you embed or link, the inserted Excel spreadsheet will not update automatically unless you specifically create a link between the two files.
However, once linked, the data in the embedded or linked spreadsheet will be refreshed when changes are detected in the original Excel spreadsheet.
Apart from pasting an existing Excel spreadsheet, you can also insert a new Excel object in Word, which basically launches Excel inside Word itself.
In this article, I’ll show you how to do it using all three methods and explain what you need to do to create a link.
Copy and paste method
Let’s start with the first method, which is a simple copy and paste from Excel to Word. Note that with this method, you have the option to include only a portion of the Excel spreadsheet in the Word document. The second method for inserting an object will place the entire spreadsheet in the Word file.
Step 1. Select the area in the Excel spreadsheet that you want to include in Word, and then press Ctrl + C to copy the content.
Step 2: Now go to your Word document and press Ctrl + V to paste the content into the Word file. To link, you must click the Paste Options button in the lower right corner and select either Match Target Table Style and Link to Excel or Keep Source Formatting and Link to Excel.
In newer versions of Word, you will see several icons. You can hover over them and you will see the same two options as mentioned above.
Step 3. That’s it, now your spreadsheet will be linked to the original Excel file. Every time you refresh the Excel file and reopen Word, Word asks you if you want to update the document with new data from the linked files.
Step 4: Click Yes and your table will display the new values. If both files are open at the same time, you will see the changes in real time.
Obviously, there is some pretty complex mechanism that makes all this work work, but thankfully you don’t need to worry about it. It just works! Note that if you just copy and paste and do not select one of the linking options, you will simply have a separate Excel object pasted in and will not update when you make changes to the original Excel file.
Also, using this method, you cannot edit Excel data in Word and display it back to Excel spreadsheet. This only works one way. If you make changes to the data in Word and save the file, you get the same message above asking if you want to update the file from linked files when you open the file again.
If you click Yes, it will just reload the latest values ??from the Excel spreadsheet and overwrite any values ??you might have changed. If you want to edit the original Excel spreadsheet, you can do so from Word by right-clicking on the data, choosing Linked Sheet Object, and then clicking Edit Link.
This is useful if the Word document was created by someone else and you don’t know where the original Excel file is.
Enter the object method
The second way to link an Excel spreadsheet to Word is by using the Insert menu.
Step 1. In Word, click the Insert tab, click the Object drop-down list, and select Object.
Step 2: Click the Create from File tab and click the Browse button to select the file.
Step 3: After selecting the file, you will see two checkboxes on the right. If you want to link an Excel spreadsheet, you need to check the “Link to file” checkbox. If you want to insert a spreadsheet so that it is not linked to the original file, leave this check box empty.
As mentioned earlier, using the Insert Object method in Word will download the entire contents of the Excel spreadsheet, not just a portion.
Note that if you double-click the Excel object (if linked), it will simply open the original Excel file in Excel itself.
Insert table method
Finally, you can insert a fully editable Excel spreadsheet into Word by going to the Insert tab, clicking Table, and then clicking Excel Table at the bottom.
This method is only useful if you want to create a new Excel spreadsheet from scratch and plan to make changes to the spreadsheet from within Word itself. However, what is cool about this method is that it inserts a floating table and loads all Excel menus also inside Word, so that you can insert formulas, etc., as if you were in Excel itself.
You can add sheets, create filters, format cells, and do everything just like in regular Excel. It’s a quick and easy way to insert some data into a Word document that can be formatted correctly with Excel, instead of relying on Word tables, which are really hard to make beautiful.
So, these are different ways to transfer an Excel spreadsheet to Word and link or unlink them, depending on your needs. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to comment. Enjoy!
–