On more than one occasion, I’ve been in the position of having some data stashed in an Excel spreadsheet, but I need to have it be part of a Word document. I could give my audience two files to see everything, but I really want to have everything in a single Word document… What to do?
Instead of just copying and pasting some cells from Excel into Word, I can use the Paste button dropdown to get some interesting options on how the data will show up in Word.
First, I’ll copy a small table in Excel:
In Word, I’ll click on the Paste button dropdown to get six paste options on how the data will appear and act in Word:
The first option pastes the data into Word, and it keeps the Excel table formatting:
The second option pastes the data into Word, but it uses the default table formatting provided by Word:
The third option pastes the data into Word using the Excel formatting, but it retains a link to the original Excel file. If the data changes in Excel, the data automatically gets updated in Word:
Option four pastes the data into Word using the default Word table formatting, but like option 3, it retains a link to the original Excel file. If the data changes in Excel, the data automatically gets updated in Word:
The fifth option pastes the data into Word as a picture. Using this option, you would not be able to change or update anything in the table. It’s just a picture you added to Word:
Last but not least, the final option strips out all the table formatting, and simply copies over the raw data:
So next time you have to copy data from Excel to Word, remember that you have more options than the default copy/paste function.
One Minute Office Magic 