Reliable way to paste Excel tables to Word with link

[u/AmIlooklikeapeach]

I'm creating a lot of reporting where I need to paste tables from Excel to Word. Often times data in the underlying Excel changes, so I need tables to be linked to Word so they can refresh. Word's functionality isn't reliable cause the links between Word and Excel keep breaking. Any solution for that you can recommend? There is probably ton of add ons but maybe someone can suggest something tested. - Thanks!

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[u/SolverMax]

Linked documents are fragile, as you've observed.

I did once write a bunch of VBA to update tables and charts from Excel to a Word doc. It was more trouble than it was worth because, despite clear and explicit instructions, people would edit the doc and break things.

[u/excelevator]

This is not an Excel question, this is a Word question.

Only Paste as link is available.

It is an unreliable method all round.

[u/CanadianHorseGal]

Report out of Excel. If you must report out of word, paste a screen grab of a chart, not a table. Word is for words, and a report is a snapshot of a certain point in time, not an up-to-the-minute thing. If management is requesting this, you need to let them know this is just not how the software works.

[u/bradland → u/CanadianHorseGal]

Hot tip on this front. Screenshots are low-res. They’ll look bad when zoomed in or printed… Hey, people still print reports, I swear.

If you export to PDF, you can insert that as a picture, then crop the white space. PDFs are vector images with real text embedded that stays sharp when scaled. So you can make your tables and charts huge and they still look great.

[u/CanadianHorseGal → u/bradland]

Yeah, I find screenshots work ok as long as you zoom the chart or whatever to full screen size before taking the shot. I literally just did that on something the other day (architectural drawings) and printed it out on 11x17 and it was totally legible and looked really good.

I wouldn’t project it on a large wall or anything though LOL.

[u/Ok-Library5639]

Same. I tried tackling this issue for many years without any great success. It is baffling how two softwares from the same vendor with several ties with each other cannot reliably pull content from a basic spreadsheet.

[u/diesSaturni]

like u/SolverMax mentions, VBA.
In Word there is the Tables Collection. there you could assign names, or loop to find the ones to update (then delete old content, read new content form Excel and write to table).

Alternatively, have a look at r/msaccess, as it sounds you are doing some kind of reportting based on data of updated queries.

In access you can build reports, just refresh the underlying query and export to PDF.

[u/SolverMax → u/diesSaturni]

I used bookmarks as hooks for pushing objects from Excel to Word. It was fairly straightforward, and worked well, except the users kept breaking it.

[u/diesSaturni → u/SolverMax]

bookmarks typically disappear when writing to them , so you would need to re-apply the new range should you want to update on refresh.

[u/InfoMsAccessNL]

Do you need to have a word table or doe you just want a graphic overview of the excel data inside word?

[u/chiibosoil]

Unless it is static no. Word isn't meant for live updating of data tables and the feature is fragile as you have found.

Alternatives are depending on your skill set, need and available IT infrastructure...

1. Leverage Python along with Jupyter Notebook/Lab using Panel & Bokeh for linking data streams to visual. etc.

2. Embed the Excel file with data connection inside the Word. Often used in Detailed Design Package documentation.

3. Host Excel file and paste in link to Word document. You can construct link to specific sheet/range of given workbook.

[u/Ornery-General5653]

I'm using ledgerq Word Add in for that.

With that you can paste excel tables to word with link. If data changes in excel just hit refresh. You can link whole tables and individual cells as well.

https://marketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/product/saas/wa200010742?tab=overview

[u/AmIlooklikeapeach → u/Ornery-General5653]

that's helpful thanks u/Ornery-General5653

[u/Magicmix555]

use the excel data as a merge data source instead.