# Microsoft Office Application Help - Excel Help forum > Excel General >  >  Pasting Cells from Excel into a Word Table

## Wibs

Hi guys,

I want to paste cells from Excel into an existing table in Word. All the 'how-tos' I have read only say how to paste Excels cells into a 'new' table in Word, not an existing one.

If I copy a few cells in Excel, then try to paste them into an appropriate part of an existing table in Word, all the Excell Cells get pasted into the one cell in the Word table, not over the same range, using the selected cell as the top left corner, which is how it 'should' work (in my opinion, anyway, after all, when copying and pasting in the other direction, from a Word table to Excel, the cells from the Word table do not all get copied into the one Excel cell, they are copied to a range, using the cell selected for the paste as the top-left corner of the range.

So, to clarify, I want to (for example) copy fifty cells in a column in Excel, (say, A2-A51), and paste them into a large table in Word, with A2 going into the cell in the word table that I have selected with my mouse, and cell A3 then goes into the cell below in the word table, and so on.

Anyone know how to do this?

Wibs

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## martindwilson

works for me just created a 50 row by 15 column table in word
copied a2 :e25 from an excel sheet 
clicked in a cell in word table
right click /paste cells    (or edit/paste cells)
and it worked fine

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## Wibs

Many thanks for trying, but it most certainly does not work for me.

I am using Office 2003 Professional for both the Word and Excel versions.

Using the method described by Martin I notice that when I click in a cell in my Word table, then right click, there is NO Paste command, only 'Paste as Nested Table' and 'Paste Rows'. When I hover my mouse over the Paste icon on the ribbon bar it also says 'Paste as Nested Table'.

Going via Edit, all that is available is 'Paste as Nested Table', and 'Paste Special'. None of the options in the Paste Special box produced what I needed.

However, thanks to a colleague, I have now been told how to do it. Instead of selecting one cell in the Word table, if I am selecting, say, a range of cells in Excel, of 4 columns by 5 rows, and I then select the 4x5 cells in the Word table that I wish to paste to, then it works just fine.

Wibs

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## nrclark

I agree this is a real pain in neck. The solution I discovered is fairly simple, but far from obvious.  When you select the cells you want to paste to in the MS Word table, be sure you don't select anything to the right of the right edge of the table (this becomes more obvious if you show invisible characters).  The easiest way to make sure you're doing it correctly is to start selecting cells by clicking in the middle of a cell on the right.

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## guybrown

SOLUTION: In the first column you can only right click and paste *rows*. In the second column you can right click and paste *cells*. So, right click in first column and insert column to left. Then right click in the second column (the original first column) and paste cells. Then right click in first column, delete cells, delete entire column. Done.

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## robtr03

> SOLUTION: In the first column you can only right click and paste *rows*. In the second column you can right click and paste *cells*. So, right click in first column and insert column to left. Then right click in the second column (the original first column) and paste cells. Then right click in first column, delete cells, delete entire column. Done.



guybrown, you are a beautiful man.  Thank you for this!  I was trying to add 10s of Excel rows to Word table with only 5 rows existing, and the other suggestions were not practical at all.

Thank you, Thank you, THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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## ChazAitch

Another solution (which I just discovered) is to select and copy the Excel data / text then select the same number of cells in your Word table, right-click on the first cell and select paste. Automatically formats your Excel data into the table cells.

If you select too many cells (e.g. if you're copying rows 1 to 40 from a column and select 50 rows in the Word table) it starts the copy again, so you'd get (e.g.) rows 1 to 40, then rows 1 to 10 repeated... but that's far easier than keying it all in!

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