(Credit: Microsoft)
You can make Word display the current contents of an Excel spreadsheet, PowerPoint slide, and much else. The contents displayed in Word will be the current version of the spreadsheet or slide, though you may need to go through a few steps to update Word’s copy of the data. In Windows, start by going to the Insert tab of the Ribbon, then, in the Text box, click Object (it’s the icon at the lower-right of the box). Then, in the dialog that opens, choose, the Create from File tab, and select an existing Excel worksheet. (On a Mac, use Insert > Object, and click the File button.) Click the “Link to File” checkbox so that changes in the Excel file will be reflected in the Word document. Word will insert the cells from the worksheet that have data in them. Word calls the inserted cells an “object.”
Later, when you change the data in the worksheet in Excel, you can make Word update its version of the data by right-clicking in the cells and choosing Update Link from the pop-up menu. If you have more than one inserted object in your document, you update all of them from File > Info > Edit Links to Files. Also, if you close your Word file, and reopen it after changing the content of the Excel file, Word will prompt you to update the data in the Word file.