Using Excel with Word

Excel is the spreadsheet component of Microsoft Office. A spreadsheet (or worksheet, in Excel terminology) is like a computerized accountant's worksheetyou enter information and formulas and the software automatically calculates results (Figure 9). Best of all, if you change one of the numbers in the worksheet, the results of calculations automatically change as necessary.

Figure 9. Spreadsheet software like Excel is most often used to create worksheets full of financial information.

You can use Excel with Word to:

• Include information from an Excel document in a Word document (Figure 7).

• Perform a Word data merge with an Excel list as a data source.

Tips

• Spreadsheet software is especially handy for financial calculations, but it is also often used to maintain lists of data (Figure 10).

  Figure 10. Excel has built-in features for managing lists of information.

  
  
  

• Excel also includes powerful charting capabilities so you can create charts based on spreadsheet information (Figure 11).

  Figure 11. Excel also includes powerful charting capabilities.

  
  
  

• To learn more about using Excel for Mac OS X, pick up a copy of Excel X for Mac OS X: Visual QuickStart Guide, a Peachpit Press book by Maria Langer.

To include Excel document content in a Word document

To insert an Excel document as an object in a Word document, consult the section about OLE objects earlier in this chapter.

Or

1.	In the Excel document, select the cells (Figure 12) or chart (Figure 13) that you want to include in the Word document. Figure 12. Select the cells... Figure 13. ...or the chart that you want to include.
2.	Choose Edit > Copy (Figure 14) or press . Figure 14. Choosing Copy from Excel's Edit menu.
3.	Switch to Word and position the insertion point in the Word document where you want the Excel content to appear.
4.	Choose Edit > Paste (Figure 15) or press . The selection appears in the Word document (Figures 16 and 17). Figure 15. Choosing Paste from Word's Edit menu. Figure 16. Worksheet cells are pasted into a Word document as a Word table. Figure 17. A chart is pasted into a Word document as a picture.

Tips

• You can also drag-and-drop Excel content into a Word document. I tell you about drag-and-drop in Chapter 2.

• Worksheet cells are pasted into Word as a Word table (Figure 16). An Excel chart is pasted into Word as a picture (Figure 17). I tell you more about tables in Chapter 8 and working with pictures in Chapter 10.

To use an Excel list as a data source for a data merge

1.	Follow the instructions in Chapter 15 to display the Data Merge Manager and create a main document.
2.	Choose Open Data Source from the Get Data pop-up menu in the Data Source area of the Data Merge Manager (Figure 18). Figure 18. Choose Open Data Source from the Get Data pop-up menu.
3.	Use the Choose a File dialog that appears (Figure 19) to locate, select, and open the Excel file you want to use for the data merge. Figure 19. Use the Choose a File dialog to open the file you want to use as the data source.
4.	Set options in the Open Workbook dialog (Figure 20) to specify which worksheet and cells contain the list you want to use for the merge. Then click OK. Figure 20. Set options in the Open Workbook dialog to indicate the worksheet and cells where the data resides.
5.	Follow the steps in Chapter 15 to complete the main document with field names that appear in the Merge Field area of the Data Merge Manager (Figure 21) and perform the merge. Figure 21. Field names from the Excel list appear in the Merge Field area of the Data Merge Manager.

Tip

• I explain how to use Word's data merge feature in Chapter 15.