Using Drag and Drop to Move Data In Office 2007


Dragging and dropping is possibly the easiest method, given that you can look at where you want to insert the data you drag in its target document. It’s not clear that Office is using the Windows Clipboard to perform the drag operation, but it is.

Sometimes, screen room isn’t ample, so to simulate a drag operation you can use copy and paste. The data, however, doesn’t always enter the target document and look and behave exactly as it did in its original document. After all, PowerPoint has no spreadsheet calculation capabilities, so you shouldn’t expect to apply all of Excel’s power to a worksheet you place in a PowerPoint presentation, but you’ll often have some ability to edit and manipulate the data you place there, as this task demonstrates.


Resize Program Windows
To move from Excel to Word, resize your Excel and Word windows so that you be able to see together the source Excel worksheet and the targeted Word document.


Select Cells to Drag
In your Excel worksheet, select the cells you want to drag to the Word document.

Drag and Drop the Selection
To drag the selected Excel data to your Word document, you must point to the edge of the selected data in Excel. Your mouse pointer will change from the cell-pointing thick white cross to a four-headed arrow to let you know that’s where you can drag from.

Drag the data to Word. As you drag, you’ll notice that the mouse pointer changes to a box shape as it moves from Excel to Word. Drag the mouse until it rests at the position in your Word document where you want the Excel data to go, and release your mouse button.

Adjust the Received Data
Maximize your Word window to see the Excel data. Generally, the data arrives in nice shape, but you’ll probably have to change the format some to conform to the surrounding document you were writing before copying Excel’s data.

The Excel worksheet might show up as a Word table depending on the complexity of the worksheet. If you’re unable to format the worksheet, double click the worksheet data in your Word document, and you should be able to edit it as a Word table.

Modify According to Your Needs
You won’t always be dragging data from Excel to Word, of course. You can move data between numerous combinations of Office 2007 data in the same way that you saw here. In the same way, you might drag a Word document to a worksheet to introduce the worksheet, or perhaps send an Excel table to a PowerPoint presentation.

Although dragging and dropping is the most intuitive method for a Windows user, as you work with Office 2007, you’ll discover new ways to share data. For example, you can create a new Excel worksheet from within a Word document without ever starting Excel! Click to display Word’s Insert ribbon. Click the Table button, and select Excel Spreadsheet. An Excel worksheet opens inside your Word document, and Word’s ribbon changes to offer buttons identical to those on Excel’s ribbon. You can now perform all Excel operations possible on the worksheet that’s embedded inside your Word document.