While it might initially seem like there wouldn’t be a lot of crossover in the types of information that you have in a Word document and an Excel spreadsheet, you might discover that you need to move data from one file to the other.
This is particularly likely when you’re dealing with a table in your document. Fortunately, there are ways to convert Word table to Excel so that you can analyze the data from your Word document using Excel’s powerful data tools.
How to Do a Microsoft Word to Excel Table Conversion
- Open Excel.
- Open your Word document.
- Highlight the table, then press Ctrl + C to copy it.
- Open Excel and choose where to put the table, then press Ctrl + V.
Our guide continues below with additional information on how to convert Word table to Excel data, including pictures of these steps.
While Microsoft Excel features a number of advanced tools and settings to work with data in spreadsheet and table formats (there are even ways to convert text to numbers in Excel), Microsoft Word has some of those options, too.
If you’ve created a document in Microsoft Word that needed to reference some data, then it’s entirely possible that you have elected to present that data in a table format.
But you may have discovered that Word tables have a limited set of options for sorting data or performing mathematical operations on data, which could lead you to work with that data in Excel.
Fortunately, you can convert a Microsoft Word table to Excel using a copy and paste method that gets the data into a spreadsheet with just a few steps.
Do you need to combine some of the cells in your table? Our guide on how to merge cells in Word 2016 will show you how.
How to Convert Word Table to Excel
Use these steps to convert a Microsoft Word table to an Excel spreadsheet.
Step 1: Open Microsoft Excel.
Launch the Excel application or open an existing spreadsheet.
Step 2: Open the document with the table in Microsoft Word.
Open Word and select your document, or double-click on the document inside of a folder.
Step 3: Select the table cells in the Word document, then press Ctrl + C to copy them.
Click and drag with your mouse to select the table cells.
Note that you can choose to copy only part of the table, if you would prefer to do that.
Step 4: Click inside the Excel cell where you want the top-left cell, then press Ctrl + V to paste it.
Open your Excel spreadsheet, select the top-left cell where you want to paste the data, then use the Ctrl + V keyboard shortcut to paste the copied table.
You should now be able to view and edit the table data in Microsoft Excel.
Once you have that data in Excel you can read our Microsoft Excel Create Table Guide and see about some ways that you can make that data easier to use.
Now that you have completed our convert Word table to excel guide you can more easily move data between the two applications.
After you paste the data, a small Paste Options dialog button will appear next to it. You can click that button and select Match Destination Formatting to use the Excel formatting, or you can select Match Source Formatting to use the Word formatting.
Note that it’s possible your pasted table data includes some problematic characters or formatting that you may need to adjust.
For example, there may be extra lines in the cells which could cause empty rows in Excel, there may be blank spaces either preceding or following the cell data, or numbers may be formatted as text.
If you are having problems working with the data in Excel, then fixing these issues will typically resolve those problems.
Frequently Asked Questions About How to Export a Word Table to Excel
Can I copy an entire table from a Word file and put it into an Excel worksheet?
Yes, you are able to import data into an Excel workbook tab if you would like to edit that existing data in a spreadsheet instead of a document.
Simply open your Excel file and your Word document, copy the table data in the document, then paste it into Excel.
You can use the keyboard shortcut for both of these actions to make it easier.
Copy keyboard shortcut – Ctrl + C
Paste keyboard shortcut – Ctrl + V
Can I copy tabular data from a PDF file into a Microsoft Office application?
While Word and Excel have gotten better at being able to convert text from other places like a text file or a plain text text document, it might occasionally struggle with some data from sources like PDF files.
Sometimes it works properly and sometimes it doesn’t. A lot of the problems can arise from different formatting settings like fonts, or things like line breaks and paragraph breaks can make the data separate text in a way that is unhelpful.
You can always try copying and pasting the data from the PDF into the desired file, and use one of the different pasting options if a regular copy and paste isn’t working.
Is there a way to import data in Excel?
Yes, you can use Excel’s data importer if you would like to try another way to turn a file into a spreadsheet.
You can open Excel, then select the Data tab at the top of the window.
You can then choose one of the data import options from the Get & Transform section in the ribbon.
This will open a dialog box where you can specify the settings for the import and choose the file source.
The different import options available in Excel for Office 365 include:
– Get Data
– From Text/CSV
– From Web
– From Table/Range
– Recent Sources
– Existing Connections
Additional Sources
- How to subtract in Excel
- How to sort by date in Excel
- How to center a worksheet in Excel
- How to select non-adjacent cells in Excel
- How to unhide a hidden workbook in Excel
- How to make Excel vertical text
Matthew Burleigh has been writing tech tutorials since 2008. His writing has appeared on dozens of different websites and been read over 50 million times.
After receiving his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Computer Science he spent several years working in IT management for small businesses. However, he now works full time writing content online and creating websites.
His main writing topics include iPhones, Microsoft Office, Google Apps, Android, and Photoshop, but he has also written about many other tech topics as well.