Daljit Dhadwal

About a year ago, I asked this question on the SuperUser site, but I didn’t get an answer that worked. I’ve finally come up with a solution.

The following is a very common workflow when writing a report:

1. Make tables and charts in Excel
2. Copy and paste these into Word and write additional text around the tables and charts

If you need to update the report regularly, copying and pasting from Excel into Word can take up a lot of time. The solution to this is to paste links to the tables and charts in Word rather than the tables and charts themselves. This way when the tables and charts are updated in Excel, they’re automatically updated in Word.

Most of the time linking between Excel and Word is easy and works very well. However, if the table or pivot table you link to is expanding over time (e.g., you’re adding new data each month), the linked version of the table or pivot table won’t expand in Word. In this post, I’ll show one method for solving this problem.

You should be familiar with the following functions and features: Excel table, pivot table, & function, counta function, indirect function, defined names, and Word field codes.

I’ve created a screencast that shows how to set up dynamic links to Excel tables and pivot tables in Microsoft Word (running time: 4 minutes 4 seconds).