How to Insert Excel Data into Word Like Tables, Files, and Spreadsheets

Written by co-founder Kasper Langmann, Microsoft Office Specialist.

Microsoft Word is corking for working on documents—merely not so great with tables.

If yous want to put a tabular array into a Microsoft Word document, yous can piece of work with Word's born table tools, or you can insert data directly from Excel.

Approximate which ane is better?

Getting your Excel data into Word is easy, makes it wait ameliorate, and automatically updates. It'due south a no-brainer.

Let'southward take a look at how to become that data from one app to some other.

*This tutorial is for Excel 2019/Microsoft 365 (for Windows). Got a unlike version? No problem, you can still follow the exact same steps.

Free video on inserting Excel information in Word

Sentry my video and learn how to hands copy and paste data from Excel to Word.

Prefer text over video? Then continue below!

What is an Excel Worksheet object?

Contempo versions of Microsoft Office include the capability to insert objects into documents. These objects are eitherembeddedorlinked.

Embedded objects don't update. If you include an embedded Excel object and change data in the Excel sail you copied it from, no changes will be applied.

Linked objects update automatically. A linked Excel object will update to reverberate changes in the original Excel sheet.

Y'all tin embed and link things other than Excel worksheets, but nosotros'll focus on Excel objects here.

Kasper Langmann, Co-founder of Spreadsheeto

It's worth noting that the linked spreadsheet needs to remain available for this to piece of work.

Also, this process works in opposite, likewise: you can link objects from Discussion and insert them into Excel worksheets.

Get your Complimentary exercise file

It's easy to embed Excel tables in Word documents, but it's likewise a proficient thought to become some exercise.

Take hold of the complimentary example worksheet below and follow along!

BONUS: Download the Excel To WordPractise Workbook File to go on with this post.

Embedding Excel objects in Word

We'll start with the simpler of the two: embedding an Excel object. Permit's take a look at the example workbook to come across how it works.

Open up the example workbook and a blank Microsoft Word certificate.

On the first sheet in the workbook, yous'll run across a small table. Select and copy information technology.

copied-table

Go to your Word document, and paste the table withCtrl + V.

You'll run into a table similar this one:

word-table

If you click into this table, nothing notable will happen—y'all tin can edit the names of the months or the numbers, and they'll change.

If yous try inputting an Excel formula, all the same, it will only brandish as text.

Kasper Langmann, Co-founder of Spreadsheeto

Head back to the Excel worksheet and re-create the table once more.

In Word, click to theDwelling tab of the Ribbon, and selectPaste > Paste Special. In the resulting pop-upwardly window, click onMicrosoft Excel Worksheet Object, and clickOK.

paste-excel-table

You'll at present see a tabular array that looks a fleck different:

excel-worksheet-object

At first, information technology looks like the distinguishing characteristic of this table is gridlines.

But if you double-click the table, you'll go a surprising new interface:

excel-in-word

As y'all can see, this gives you an embedded version of Excelwithin Microsoft Word.

You can do all the things yous're used to in Excel: employ and edit formulas, utilise conditional formatting, add new rows and columns, sort and filter data, and everything else you lot've come to expect from Excel.

In brusque, it gives yous a lot more than tabular array-editing ability than y'all get with the standard Microsoft Discussion interface.

Kasper Langmann, Co-founder of Spreadsheeto

To go out the Excel interface, click outside of the table, and you lot'll get back to the regular editor for your document.

If you go back to the Excel spreadsheet and make an edit in the table, y'all'll run into that the Excel object doesn't update. And then if your calculations change, or you become new data and add together it to the spreadsheet, you'll demand to update your Give-and-take document manually.

Let's ready that.

Linking Excel objects in Word

As I mentioned earlier, embedded objects don't automatically update. Linked objects, on the other hand, do.

And this can salve you lot a lot of time.

Fortunately, linking an Excel object in Microsoft Discussion is easy.

Copy the table from the example workbook, and head dorsum to Microsoft Discussion. Once again, clickPaste > Paste Special in theAbode tab. Again, selectMicrosoft Excel Worksheet Object.

This time, however, you'll need i more than click. On the left side of the window, you'll run across 2 radio buttons. One saysPaste, and the other saysPaste Link. Click the push next toPaste Link:

word-paste-link

After strikingOK, you'll get some other table in your Word certificate. This 1 looks the same every bit the previous one:

word-tables-types

There's an important deviation, however. Let's go back to Excel and change one of the values.

We'll modify May's value from 9 to x.

Here's what happens:

linked-excel-table

It might not be super articulate in the GIF above, simply the linked table automatically updates to match the Excel spreadsheet, while the embedded table doesn't.

Kasper Langmann, Co-founder of Spreadsheeto

Inserting new Excel worksheets
in Give-and-take

Linking an Excel worksheet is the best manner to get Excel data into Word, considering Excel is the all-time tool for working with spreadsheets.

If you want to, still, yous can insert a new spreadsheet into your Word document and work on it with the in-Word Excel tool.

To be completely honest, I don't understand why you wouldn't just work in Excel first, but I thought you might want to know anyhow!

Kasper Langmann, Co-founder of Spreadsheeto

To become a new worksheet object into word, become to theInsert tab on the Ribbon.

Click theObject push button in theText group, then find theMicrosoft Excel Worksheet Object option.

insert-excel-object

HitOK, and you'll get a blank worksheet in your Word certificate.

When you want to edit it, double-click the worksheet and you'll open the Excel editor correct within of Word.

excel-editor-word

As before, you lot tin practise all the things you usually do in Excel correct from Word in this worksheet.

Work smarter with Microsoft Office

Although information technology takes a lot of flak, Microsoft Office has some very powerful features that let you lot use the apps very efficiently. Linking worksheets in Word documents is ane of those features.

The more you tin automate, the more time you'll relieve. And the more than time you save, the more efficient you'll be.

And so starting time using Word and Excel together today!