understanding linked excel table in Word 2010

[capri]

Hi,

I've always preferred to paste Excel tables into Word documents as metafiles, but my new manager insists on linked tables. As I've been going through reports linking tables I've run into numerous problems with the column widths. eg the width in Word is too wide, but if I narrow the width in Excel then the Word appears okay (in excel text does not all fit but in Word it does). I tried changing 3 value columns to a width of 10 but the third column was much wider until I manually adjusted just that column.

Can anyone explain what is happening when you link, and how can you get a reasonable appearance in Word without distorting the the appearance in Excel? It's almost as if Word is allow "X" width for the table and depending on how I adjust the column widths, it will force one out of proportion to follow whatever table width it has allowed for.

Thanks
capri

[HansV]

When you select Paste > Paste Special... in Word, which of the available formats do you select?

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[capri]

Hi Hans,

I've been using Paste Special then selecting the icon for Link and keep Source Formatting. I'll give it another try using the HTML format. Thanks

capri

[macropod]

If you paste an Excel worksheet object into word (whether as a link or otherwise), simply dragging the sizing handles from any corner will allow you to re-scale everything in the object. You can also re-scale the width and height independently of each other.

[capri]

Thanks macropod,

I knew about that, however my problem was when pasted the first column took up almost the entire width of the portrait Word document so the other columns ran well of the page. I could not grab the right hand corners to resize. I found that playing around with the width of the columns in Excel could adjust the size, but it was tedious doing that with every object. Hans solution of using the HTML format worked much better.

capri

[macropod]

As I said:

simply dragging the sizing handles from any corner will allow you to re-scale everything in the object

So, even if you can't see the right-hand side of the object, you can use the handles in the left top or left bottom corners for the rescaling.