Copy a Word table into Excel

When you want to move data from a Word table to Excel, you can avoid having to retype that data by copying it from Word directly. When you copy data from a Word table into an Excel worksheet, the data in each Word table cell is pasted in an individual cell on the worksheet.

Important: After pasting the data, you may have to clean it up so that you can take advantage of the calculation features in Excel. For example, there may be unwanted extra spacing in cells, numbers may have been pasted as text rather than as numeric values that you can calculate, or dates are not displayed correctly. For help with formatting numbers as dates, currency, percentages, etc., see Format numbers. For help with formatting the style of your table, see Format an Excel table.

1. In a Word document, select the rows and columns of the table that you want to copy to an Excel worksheet.

2. To copy the selection, press CTRL+C.

3. In the Excel worksheet, select the upper-left corner of the worksheet area where you want to paste the Word table.

   Note: Make sure that the paste area is empty before you paste the data. Data in Word table cells will replace any existing data in worksheet cells in the paste area. If necessary, review the table first in Word to verify its dimensions.

4. Press CRL+V.

5. To adjust the formatting, click Paste Options next to the data that you pasted, and then do the following:

   • To use the formatting that is applied to the worksheet cells, click Match Destination Formatting.

   • To use the formatting of the Word table, click Keep Source Formatting.

Note: Excel pastes the contents of each Word table cell into a single cell. After you paste the data, you can distribute the data across additional cells in a column (for example, to divide first and last names so that they appear in separate cells) by using the Text to Columns command. For more information, see Distribute the contents of a cell into adjacent columns.