Use Excel within Word (Issue 61) by Tiamari

Since I am the resident computer lecturer at the College, I am often asked to “quickly fix up” a document. Sometimes this might mean a good few hours of work! Documents that are not well planned can become such a mess that it takes hours to modify it.

Tables are especially tricky. A table that was originally copied and pasted from Excel will contain extra spaces causing your figures to wrap inside cells for no apparent reason. Cells are also sometimes merged, even though the Excel spreadsheet did not contain merged cells originally.

What often happens with large spreadsheets is that the copied table will not fit properly in the Word Document (usually too wide). One would then typically try to adjust the column width. But in doing so, you end up inadvertently changing the column immediately to the right, which then also have to be adjusted and so forth.

If all the columns should be the same size you could simply use the DISTRIBUTE COLUMNS EVENLY option. However, this is often not the case. Some columns may consist of small numbers while others may contain high figures. When columns are not adjacent, this option cannot be used in MS Word.

One way to solve the problem is to transfer (copy and paste) the entire table to Excel. (If you still have the original Excel spreadsheet available, it is a bonus). Adjust the column widths and font sizes in Excel, and then transfer it back to Word. Set the table layout to AUTOFIT TO WINDOW. If it is still too wide, adjust it again in Excel until the table fits.

A MUCH better way to do this is to firstly make sure you have the table in Excel (copy it to Excel if necessary). Do any adjustments in Excel and get it as close as possible to a size that would fit onto an A4. Now go to your Word document. On the INSERT tab, within the TEXT group, select the OBJECT option.

On the dialog box, click on the CREATE FROM FILE tab. Now you can browse to the Excel file. You can have the data linked to the Excel file by ticking the LINK TO FILE box (this is optional). Click on OK when done. Once inserted, you can further adjust the object by dragging the corners to resize it, just like you would do with a picture. (Use the top left corner if the whole object is not visible)

The beauty of this feature is that you will have an Excel file within a Word Document. If you double-click on the inserted object, you will notice that the ribbon changed to the Excel ribbon – you are effectively working in Excel even though you are saving the document as a Word document. You can make changes as you wish, and when done, click outside of the object boundary to revert back to Word.

The only drawback is that you might confuse anyone else who would want to change the table and does not know about the feature. Should that happen, shove a copy of the WUEC mag across the desk!

Happy Clicking!