Technical Report--Embed Excel Tables

Exporting an Excel Spreadsheet
to a Writing.Com Static Item

Have you ever wanted to display an Excel table inside a Writing.Com static item? 

It turns out you can!  It's not hard--it just takes a few steps. You have to avoid a couple of Microsoft tripwires on the way, but if you follow the steps you'll have an embedded Excel table in no time!

Here's an example of the kind of table you'll learn how to produce.  This one has links to my author  logo, to my WDC handle, to the first three chapters of one of my novels, and generates a running word count. 

	Max Griffin 🏳️‍🌈
Chapter	Word Count	Running Word Count
"Chapter 01--Murder on Cabot's Landing"	2316	2316
"Chapter 02--Murder on Cabot's Landing"	2255	4571
"Chapter 03--Murder on Cabot's Landing"	2769	7340

Follow along below, and you'll learn how to produce and update this table.

                                       
How to CREATE a static item with an embedded Excel Table.

STEP ONE. Create and format your table in Excel. ▼

Use the usual Excel tools to create and style your table with lines, background colors, fonts, alignment, and so on.

First tripwire.  Your various style adjustments will undergo two translation steps: one to Microsoft Word and the other from Word to WritingML.  Neither of these translations is 100% perfect, so you might have to make some adjustments after inspecting the results.  Both translations mess with column widths in particular.  In the example table, I'd set the second and third columns to have the same width. Note this setting didn't survive the translations.  It also messed with the column heights.

WritngML trick. It turns out you can put links to things like WDC items, WDC images, and WDC users inside your Excel table.  Excel andWord will treat these links as text, but when you get to the last step, converting the Word document to WritingML, they will appear as WDC links, images, and user links.   

STEP TWO. Embed your table in a Word Document. ▼

Create a new WORD document.

In your Excel spreadsheet, highlight the table you created in STEP ONE and save it, via <CNTL C> to your paste buffter.

Back in your Word document, paste the table using the option Link and keep source formatting. You will see a version of your table appear in your Word document.  It will be close to the formatting of your Excel table, but might not be exactly the same.  You might have to go back and make some adjustments to your Excel table, or you can just leave it.

Save your word document ON YOUR HARD DISK, You must check the SAVE AS option and click the selection ON THIS PC, since otherwise Word will, by default, save your document to OneDrive.  Make a note of WHERE you saved this file.

Second Tripwire.  Microsoft will, by default, save your document to OneDrive unless you specify as above to save it to your physical hard drive.  If it's on a virtual drive, like OneDrive or Dropbox, Microsoft won't LET you copy it to a web source like Writing.Com.  Not a helpful set of defaults on Microsoft, and not an obvious tripwire, so be careful!

Finally, CLOSE your Word document.

Third Tripwire.  Microsoft won't let you copy the document to Writing.Com if it's still open in Word.  Another not-very-helpful default from Microsoft.  In any case, be sure to close your document after noting where you saved it.

STEP THREE.  Use the word document to create a new static item. ▼

 
Now you're ready to create your Writing.Com copy of your Excel table.

Click on the green + sign + Create New Item in the left-hand Writring.Com menu. 

In the resulting window, you'll need to drag and drop the icon for the Word document you created in STEP TWO.  Open FILE EXPLORER in windows and find the location (probably Documents or My Documents) where you saved the Word file in STEP TWO.  Drag the icon for the document into the area of the window that opened on Writing.Com that says Drag and drop your Word Document here. 

If you can't drag and drop, then one of those earlier tripwires got in the way. Most likely your Word document is still open or you're trying to drag a copy auto-saved to OneDrive by Microsoft instead of the one you saved to your physical hard drive.  Both copies will appear in the various Documents folders Windows displays.

Fourth Tripwire.  Finding the copy you saved on your physical drive.  Sometimes Microsoft autosaves documents to OneDrive.  This can be useful, but you can also wind up with two copies of the same document in your Documents folder--one on OneDrive and one on your physical hard drive.  You have to use the one on the physical hard drive when uploading to Writing.Com. File Explorere will (usually) tell you a file's location.

If all goes well, Writing.Com will then ask you if you want to replace existing content or create new content.  You'll be creating new content, so check that box.  Writing.Com will then ask you want a "simple" or "complex" conversion. Tables are always "complex," so check the "Complex" box.

If all goes as planned, it will take a moment for Writing.Com to process the file, after which you can save  and view it. 

STEP FOUR  Dislpaying an embedded spreadheet in an email or another static item. ▼

This is easy.  You can use the insert tag, like so {insert:2307544} to display an item that inclues a table. That's how I got the table above to display on this page. 

I use this method when updating my daily goals on "Habit Heroes " .  See "Re: Max's October Goals"  .

                                       
How to UPDATE a static item with an embedded Excel Table.
This uses a simplified version of the above steps.

STEP ONE.  Update your Excal Table. ▼

Open and update your Excel table.  Save it to be sure that that you've retained the updates.

STEP TWO.  Update the Word file your previously saved. ▼

Open the Word document you saved to your hard drive when you initially created and linked the spreadsheet.


The Word file is already linked to your spreadsheet, so it will ask you if you want to update it.  Answer yes. The file will update using the revisions you made to the Excel file in STEP ONE.

Click "save a copy" and check "to this PC" option to be SURE IT SAVES to your physical hard drive.  Microsoft will tell you the file already exists and askis if you want to over-write yet. Check the "yes" box.

CLOSE your document before going on to the next step.

Final tripwires.  If you don't say "save a copy," Word will save it to OneDrive instead of your hard disk.  You can't use a OneDrive copy to update the Writing.Com static item, so the update will fail or, worse, you'll use the original non-updated version of your Word document.  If you don't CLOSE your document, Microsoft word won't let you upload it.

STEP THREE.. Update your static item ▼

View your Static item on Writing.Com and edit it using the "quick edit" option.  Drag and drop the updated version of the Word document into the resulting window and follow the same process as for creating new static item with embedded content.