Pasting Word table into Excel creates cells within table rows, removes hyperlinks (MS 365 for Mac)

Copper Contributor

I have a Word table that includes two or more paragraphs within some rows. When I paste the table into Excel, the table rows are delimited by black lines, but within any row that included paragraphs, the paragraphs are separated into cells delimited by light gray lines.  Can I somehow combine those cells within a row, so there is only one cell per column for each table row? -- Also, my table includes numerous hyperlinks within the text.  The links either disappear or apply to the whole cell when the table is pasted into Excel.  How can I preserve them?

5 Replies

@jjlanc 

You can do the following:

  • Select the table in Word.
  • Replace ^p (the code for a paragraph mark in Word) with some text that doesn't occur in the document, for example %%%%
  • Copy and paste the table into Excel.
  • In Excel, replace %%%% with Ctrl+J (the code for a line feed in Excel)

 

A hyperlink in Excel can only apply to an entire cell, not to part of the text in a cell.

@Hans Vogelaar 

 

Many thanks.

 

It's too bad about hyperlinks - since I often have more than one in a single table cell, I'll have to think of another way of incorporating them. Probably additional columns - not a real problem, since the basic table only has 8 columns.

@jjlanc 

 

May I ask a question? Why are you pasting from Word into Excel in the first place? From your example, at any rate, you're not actually using Excel for its own unique capabilities. Word on its own does just fine with tables, and in fact for largely text tables has MORE versatility (think multiple paragraphs within a cell; think bullet lines within a cell, etc) than Excel.

 

There may be a perfectly valid reason, but I ask because I've seen many a time when people think Excel is the place to do these just because it always has rows and columns...not realizing how much Word does as well. You clearly know that Word has the capability, so I'm curious.

 

It is just a question and you are free to ignore it as an impertinent question......

@mathetes 

 

Yes, a perfectly good question.  Reason 1: I'm collaborating with someone who is absolutely committed to Excel, and he's senior in our collaboration.  He's tolerated my use of tables in the past, but for this very large one, it's become an issue.  Reason 2: I find that for a table with ca. 4K rows, not only does it take up to a minute to save, also often typing new text suffers from a significant delay - also searching and replacing are slow.  Excel doesn't have this issue, at least in my trials so far. I imagine Word is recalculating something to do with the structure in the background, while Excel has the structure fixed.  But since I'm a long-time Mac user, and have previously avoided Word and Excel entirely, I don't really know.  I usually work in Nisus Writer Pro, and do everything in RTF - but translating from RTF on a Mac to Word (let alone Excel) on a Windows machine has its own issues.

 

Anyway, not impertinent at all.  I remain much happier with tables when I'm on my own. 

@jjlanc355 

 

Hmmm.. I'm long time Mac myself. Hadn't heard of Nisus Writer Pro till you mentioned it. It looks fascinating.

 

When I'm feeling creative (or wanting to pretend to that status) I use Scrivener, which is what some true author friends use.

 

Excel--for those purposes in which it excels--is lots of fun. And Word, frankly, satisfies most of my text-intensive applications. Scrivener comes in handy for the occasional bigger and longer term writing project.