Reference Excel cells in Word - excel

Does anyone know of a pre-packaged solution for referencing Excel cells directly in a Word document?
For example,
{[TestExcel]Tab1!A1}
Dear Mr. {[TestExcel]Tab1!A2},
Our systems have alerted us that your account {TestExcel]Tab1!AccountNumber} is overdue. Please remit payment of {TestExcel]Tab1!PaymentDue} immediately.
This example uses a hypothetical { } syntax, where the contents are standard Excel formula.
Every solution I've seen uses custom VBA to accomplish this. It seems like an extremely common need for which there should be some good 3rd party software available that lets non-technical users accomplish this task.
As indicated in the example above both named ranges and standard cell references would need to be supported.

Yes.
Step 1: Copy the excel cell.
Step 2: Go to your word document where you want to paste the reference.
Step 3: Right click
Step 4: Under paste options, select "link with source formatting" or "link and merge formatting".

I tried #Green Demon's method, but the two Paste Options listed were not present for me (Office 2013). I only had Keep Source Formatting, Merge Formatting, and Keep Text Only. However, I poked around and found the Paste Special, which was hidden on the Ribbon
The instructions are as follows:
Copy the Excel range.
Go to your Word document, and left click where you want to paste the Excel range.
Click on Paste Special from the Ribbon as shown below, or type Ctrl+Alt+V.
Click on the Paste link radio button.
Click on Microsoft Excel Worksheet Object. The Paste Special dialog box should look something like this:
Click OK.
The range should now be pasted in your document, and if you save, close, and re-open the Word document, you will be prompted about whether or not you want to "update this document with the data from the linked files," which works the same way as it does if you're doing Excel-to-Excel linking.
This feature is fantastic, and I'm so happy to have found it today. However, in my brief experience using it, having these Word-to-Excel links dramatically increases the amount of time it takes to open your Word document, even before it prompts you about updating. After that, the act of updating the Excel links takes much longer than it would if you were doing the same linking Excel-to-Excel. All of my work is done on network-share files, so YMMV.

While Will's solution indeed links from the Cell objet, the content is inserted as a picture.
In the same dialog, selecting "Unformatted Unicode Text" instead will link and insert only the cell's content, which is desirable if you apply custom formatting on your text.
Unfortunately, this action only works for a single cell. Copying multiple cells will result in a text block with individual cell content seperated by tabs or line skip, with the entire block considered linked and entire. The solution is to link individual cells using this method.
This can become tedious if you plan on linking large portions of table from Excel, as for every cell the dialog must be invoked. It can be sped up by using hotkeys, but the sequence gets tedious:
alt,h,v,s, then alt+l, tab, ↓, and finally Enter
Obviously this is not practial for large numbers of cells. A AutoHotkey script can help but it third party grafted solution, on par with using VBA scripts.

alt+h+v+l works too. If you're building big documents clicking the ribbon every time gets murderous after a while.

As this is still a problem but the other answers do not take into account the latest development in word, there is a new solution, editing Green Demons answer:
Step 1: Copy the excel cell.
Step 2: Go to your word document where you want to paste the reference.
Step 3: go to the "home" tab
Step 4: Under paste options, go to "Paste Special", click on "paste link", click on "Unformatted Text".
This solves the issue others were having with the new lines that you would otherwise have with just Green Demons' solution.
Hope this still helps others.

Related

How can I open Excel 2010 hyperlinks with the keyboard?

I want to Google search a term. So, I did a concatenate formula that creates a hyperlink. It looks something like:
=CONCATENATE("https://www.google.com/search?q=",A1)
Where A1 is the location of the term I want to search.
So far, so good. This gives me a hyperlink in text form. Then, I create a second column to establish the actual hyperlink:
=HYPERLINK(location of the concatenate formula result)
Great. I've got a working hyperlink. If I use the mouse to click that formula, it opens the Google search correctly.
Now, I want to use the keyboard instead of my mouse to click this hyperlink. I need to do a bunch of these types of searches. Maybe I'll create a macro that can open them for me a few at a time.
Anyway, this older post describes a way of opening hyperlinks in Excel without using the mouse. The problem I have is that I don't see "Open Hyperlink" in my context menu. All I've got is "Remove Hyperlink".
Any ideas why and what I can do to work around it? Thanks!

Link in Microsoft Word, from a separate Excel file, ruins formatting when "update link" is hit

I have two workbooks. One is Microsoft Word, one is Microsoft Excel. The excel sheet is the model, and the word doc is the report (so formatting is important). I have values in excel that, when updated, I want to update also in the word doc while keeping the formatting.
I know that I can paste special, and I've tried both "merge formatting" and "keep source formatting". That only seems to affect the text itself, and not the layout of the text in the document.
Currently, this is what happens when I hit update link:
Before
After
I want to keep all the text where it is in the document, not have it relocated to new, separate lines every time the link is updated.
Thanks!

Auto-calculate Excel Formulae Added to a Spreadsheet by an App

I have an Excel spreadsheet with calculation options set to Automatic
However when I add some formulate for example
=CONCATENATE(“ABC",UNICHAR(8730))
The formulae do not auto-compute. Even running the manual computation from the menus does not force them to calculate.
The only way to do this is to click in the Cell, and then press Enter which is tedious since I have hundreds of cells per document, and do not want the end users to have to do this.
This does not work in Excel 16 for Mac, Windows Excel 16
UPDATE 1:
Link to sample Excel File https://www.dropbox.com/s/cxdbego1vw1jwln/SampleExcelFileWithErrors.xls?dl=0
I don't know what causes this issue, and I can't replicate it. But the two suggested solutions are:
Find and replace - swap "=" for "=". Yes the same thing.
Text to columns - click finish right away.

How to paste predefined texts?

I use few predefined strings a lot during the creation of data in MS Excel.
Is there a way I can create a drop down option on right click that says "Paste As..." and then select one of the texts I have predefined? Like an add-in.
Or is there some in built Paste option within Excel itself? That would save up loads of time for me.
In Excel Options (via the Office Button) under Proofing you may have an AutoCorrect Options... button where you can specify Replace: and With:. So you might choose something like qq1 (as unlikely to be required as such) to be replaced with whatever text you prefer to replace qq1.

Making use of selected or clicked cell without VBA

A tricky one, I assume. However, is there a way to make use of a selected or clicked cell in Excel somehow without the need for VBA?
(I know how to do it with VBA, but macros are macros, but if you want to give workbooks to people...)
For instance, I would like to make some of the content in the freezed section to be dependent on where in the sheet someone is. It would be optimal, if the selected cell/row would be trigger enough.
It would be also okay, if clicking a cell (e.g. a link navigating in the sheet) would trigger the conent to change. Hence, a solution would be to make a hyperlink change a value in some cell somewhere. I know, this is a different question, but it should be all accomplishing the same goal of the line on top ;-)
Thanks a lot!
You cannot change values or display of another cell with formula or functions.
The hyperlink will send you to another location but won't change the freezed part, except if you only freeze rows and the hyperlink send you to a further column. But you will have then to really think about your layout very precisely. Moreover, the user will even less understand what happens unless you can design a great UI (but Excel may not be the best tool though).
Some tips:
Use hyperlinks but on differents sheets
Use "transparent" macros (without big buttons but rather event vba as you pointed out)
Sorry i don't have a magical solution.

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