Transferring an Excel Table to Word – What You Need to Know

Quick Tips

• Unmerge cells before trying to copy tables. You can usually merge them back again without issues (as they’re treated as the left-most cell of the merge).
• You can paste a copied table as a picture if you don’t want it to be editable (available in the right-click context menu). This will keep the original’s look.
• If you link a portion of the table, formulas that track cells outside of the range may not behave as expected after linking or embedding.

Transferring Excel table to Word sounds simple in theory. All you have to do is select the table and copy it. But that often changes the formatting, and you might not get the full table. Here are the most common methods for transferring a table from Excel to Word that give you more options.

Option 1 – Use a Basic Table for Transferring an Excel Table to Word

Word has its own table formatting system, so pasting data into a Word table helps preserve the table structure but not necessarily all Excel formatting. For this, you first need to make a table that looks the same as your Excel one.

Step 1. Determine how many rows and columns your table has. For our sample, we’ll use a 10×4 table.

Step 2. In Word, go to “Insert.” Click on the “Table” option and select “Insert Table…”

Step 3. In the dialog, enter the numbers of rows and columns, then click on “OK.”

Step 4. Go to Excel, then select the range you want to copy and hit “Ctrl + C.”

Step 5. Go back to Word, select the entire table, and hit “Ctrl + V.”

Note that if the original letters or numbers were white, you’ll need to select those cells and change the font color. Additionally, this won’t work if your table has merged cells, so you’ll need to unmerge them.

Here’s how the resulting table looks.

Option 2 – Use an Advanced Method of Transferring a Table from Excel to Word to Keep Formulas

Copying the table to Word usually removes all cell links and formulas. But Word can technically create a separate instance of Excel within itself to allow you to edit a table.

Step 1. Go to Excel and copy the table with “Ctrl + C.”

Step 2. Go to Word, find a space where you want the table, then go to “Paste” in the Home tab and select “Paste Special.”

Step 3. Check the “Paste” option on the left, select the option “Microsoft Excel Worksheet Object” from the list, and click on “OK.”

Step 4. If you’re working in Print View, you may need to switch to Web Layout (in the View tab) to see the entire table.

Step 5. Click inside the table to start editing it. You can drag the columns to make them shorter. Otherwise, dragging the table’s edges will scale down the entire table to fit. Click outside of the editor to return to Word.

Option 3 – Link the Tables Between Excel and Word

If you want to keep the Word table updated as soon as the Excel version is changed, you’ll need to link the two documents together.

Step 1. Copy the table from Excel.

Step 2. In Word, go to “Paste Special.” In the options, select “Paste Link” on the left and “Microsoft Excel Worksheet Object.”

Step 3. This pastes the table as a linked object in Word, and clicking on a cell will open Excel to edit it.

Step 4. If you make a change to the table, right-click on the Word version and select “Update Link.” You may need to change the columns to make the table fit if you plan to print it.

If you’re sending the table to someone, you’ll need to send both files, or it will be treated as an image or stop working altogether. Then, they will need to re-link the table. This can be done by right-clicking on the table, then going to “Linked Object” and “Links.” In the dialog, go to “Change source” and find the document. Alternatively, they can repeat the process for transferring.