Excel Cells to Word with Usable Results

Have you ever tried to copy and paste cells from MS Excel to MS Word?

What happened?

I bet you went to Excel, highlighted the cells, copied the cells, went to Word, pasted the cells and poof, there they were!

Sounds great, doesn't it?

Yes, and it can be, but if you're using Word and Excel 97, there are some slight problems.

You might notice that you can't seem to easily move the cells.

Oops! No handles to grab means no easy moving.

In addition, if you're looking to make the whole thing bigger, you're going to have to go through a bit more trouble. With no handles, there's no easy click and drag option to change the size.

One more thing: for those of you who like to embed the cells into your text with text wrapping, you're out of luck there too.

Now, if you're using a newer version of Excel and Word, things aren't as bad!

You can move the table using the four way arrow that appears in the upper left hand corner when you click on the cells. Plus, there's a resizing box in the lower right hand corner.

I even found that you can wrap text around them.

But I also found that the resizing wasn't what I had in mind.

When I used the resizing box, the whole thing got bigger, but it just didn't look "pleasing" to me. The text stayed the same small size and everything seemed spread apart.

That's not really the effect I was going for. When I resize, I want the whole thing to scale larger or smaller. I don't want to have to do a lot of reformatting to get the end result.

I'm a "grab the resize box, drag and drop" sort of girl. I have no patience for all the rest!

So, what's the solution?

I mean, I love to use Excel to create my tables and then take them to Word. (After all, it's already broken into a grid, so I don't have to draw one).

Well, one idea is to copy in Excel and then use the Edit menu (Home tab on the ribbon for 2007), Paste Special choice in Word.

In the Paste Special window, you should then select Microsoft Excel Worksheet Object as the type and click OK.

Voila! Your Excel data in Word is formatted in a way that allows for easy resizing and text wrapping.

I should also mention that the data can be edited from Word. Simply double click on the data and it will convert it to an Excel worksheet for editing.

It's just one more way to have the best of both worlds!

Excel Cells to Word with Usable Results