Link data from e.g. Excel (or sharepoint) into a Word report. Best Practice?

I realize this question was posted several months ago, but perhaps you're still having this challenge or others may stumble across the same challenge, so I figured I'd respond.

My recommendation would be to use the Mail Merge feature in Word for this. When using the mail merge wizard, you can select a report template that can be modified to your liking then use your Excel spreadsheet as the source of data that fills the report.

Here's an article that explains how to do this: http://www.progenygenetics.com/knowledgebase/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/639/12/how-do-i-export-patient-data-to-create-a-custom-letter-or-report-using-microsoft-word-mail-merge

Another option would be to create the report in Excel instead of Word. If these are monthly reports where you enter the data for each month on one spreadsheet, you could use a dropdown list on the report page to select the month & year, then use Vlookup to populate the data fields. However, this would not be practical if you needed to run multiple reports for multiple people, say for example, a commissions report for a team of salespeople where they'd each get their own report. But there are other ways you could make it work, either using formulas or macros.