The Excel® Analyst's Guide to Access®

Chapter 18. Integrating Excel and Other Office Applications

Every data-oriented process has an application flow, a succession of applications that take the data from creation to end user. Sometimes only one application touches a dataset, such as when you create a report and present it in Excel. In many cases, however, data is moved from a database such as Access, is analyzed and aggregated in Excel, and is then distributed via a Word document, PowerPoint presentation, or even email.

As you know, the focus of this book has been on the integration of Excel and Access. However, it is worth looking at how Excel integrates with some other Office applications. In this chapter, you will do just that, learning how you can integrate Excel with some of the other applications in the Microsoft Office Suite.

Note

All the code in this chapter is in the Chapter18_SampleFile.xlsm file you downloaded with the sample files for this book.

Integrating Excel with Microsoft Word

It's not unusual to see a Word document that contains a table that originated in Excel. In most cases, that table was simply copied and pasted directly into Word. While this is indeed a valid form of integration, there are countless ways to integrate Excel and Word that go beyond copying and pasting data. This section offers a few examples, demonstrating different techniques you can leverage to integrate Excel and Word.

Creating a Dynamic Link to an Excel Table

How many times have you copied and pasted the same Excel table into Word, ...