Although many people know how to use Word and Excel separately, there are cases in which both types of documents can be linked to facilitate work in the office; When we do this, the Word file will work as a template and all the modifications that we need to make on the linked content must only be done in Excel. So see how you can link Excel with Word.
How to LINK or Link Excel with Word Easily
What are the advantages of linking or linking Excel with Word?
Linking an Excel with Word is very useful to avoid constant editing of a Word file; for example, you can have a kind of attendance list in excel, where exact data of people appears , and this is read by a Word document. Which will avoid possible transcription errors when making a certified document.
To understand the aforementioned, we will briefly explain a couple of examples in which we will link an Excel file with Word; In the first, we will link a list of names in Excel to a Word letter, and in the second, we will insert an Excel table that will be linked to the Word document.
Example to link or link a list
We must previously have our Word document, for example a proof of studies, whose text is the same for any student, but for each case the student’s name must be changed ; The other thing we should have is an Excel file with a vertical list of all the students’ names (1 name per cell).
Let’s go to the Correspondence tab → Start Correspondence Combination → Step by Step through the Assistant to Combine Correspondence ; then on the right side we will see a 6-step contextual menu where there are several options; in step 1 we leave marked where it says Letters and press Next .
Then in step 2 we select the option Use Current Document and press Next ; in step 3 we select the option Use an Existing List and press Browse, to search for the Excel file; A box called Select Table will open, showing us the table that we will link to Word with the OK button .
In step 4 of the Combine Correspondence contextual menu (right side) we will see several options; We select the one that says More Elements to open the Insert Combination Field window ; there we press the Insert button and on the right side we press Next Preview of the Cards to go to step 5.
In the Correspondence tab we will see some controls with arrows to select the name we need; the selection we make will be step 6; If later you have to remove or add other names, you simply have to edit the cells of the Excel without having to change anything else in the Word file. Then it remains only to print it; Maybe you don’t like the margins or you want to change something, to solve it, see how to reduce or enlarge a document from letter to legal profession.
Example to link or link a table
Tables in Word are very frequent and many times it is enough to just go to the Insert → Table tab and select with the mouse the number of tables we want; but if its content is variable, it is best to make a link with Excel . The easiest way is by selecting the Excel Spreadsheet option, but it is not the best for reasons that we will explain below.
Only the number of cells can be adjusted to this type of table, it is not possible to change its style; That is why the best option is to have the table previously created in Excel , with its data and style (colors, size, alignment, etc.) and once it is ready, we select all the cells with the mouse and copy them with Ctrl + C.
In Word we go to the Home tab → Paste → Paste Special, within the Paste Special box we select Paste Link and then the Microsoft Excel Object Spreadsheet option, to finish with the OK button ; the object will be pasted into Word exactly the same as in Excel, but it cannot be edited in any way, it can only be moved or resized.
Everything we change in Excel will be reflected in Word immediately, saving us time, effort and errors when transcribing the data in each cell manually. A few days ago we did another similar article with which we link data or excel tables, where the results are reflected in word , if it is of your interest you can take a look. Now that you know how useful it is to link Excel with Word, you just have to put these two examples into practice from now on.
