How to Insert & Embed Excel into PowerPoint (Easy Method)

Inserting Excel sheets into PowerPoint is crucial if you work with Microsoft Apps regularly. It enhances the visual appeal and clarity of your presentations as you add tables, charts and data.

PowerPoint lets you integrate an Excel sheet easily whether you want to link dynamic tables, embed static sheets or add a small snapshot of your data.

In this tutorial, we will see different ways of inserting an Excel sheet into PowerPoint. Download our sample workbook here to practice insertion in real time.

Table of Contents

Insert Excel into PowerPoint as an unlinked object

The easiest and most common way of inserting Excel into PowerPoint is to do it as an unlinked object. All you need to do is copy and paste but it has some drawbacks – we will discuss that later.

We will use the following sample data. We want to paste it into PowerPoint.

To do that,

Step 1) Open the Excel workbook and a blank PowerPoint Presentation.

Step 2) Press CTRL + A to select the table and then press CTRL + C to copy.

Step 3) In the PPT, place your cursor where you want to paste the table.

Step 4) Press CTRL + V to paste the table.

The table will be pasted into PPT in Keep Source Formatting form and is static, i.e., the table won’t be updated in PowerPoint if the source table is updated in Excel.

But we’re not done yet. Let’s see the different ways you can paste your data into PowerPoint.

Step 5) Once you have pasted the table in PowerPoint, click on the Paste Options button at the bottom right corner of your table.

Step 6) A small dropdown will appear 😃

Step 7) You can see five different types of document-pasting icons – the first form is the one the table is currently pasted in, we use destination theme for it.

Step 8) The second icon retains the formatting of the source table from Excel.

Step 9) The third icon embeds the table into the slide. This way the Excel table becomes a part of the PowerPoint slide. Any changes in source table won’t be reflected in the slide but double clicking the table will take you directly to the file.

Step 10) The fourth icon pastes the data as a picture. You can crop this image, resize it as you like.

Step 11) The fifth icon doesn’t include the borders or formatting, it only pastes the text from the table

You can use any of these options to paste your Excel table 😃

Insert Excel into PowerPoint as a linked object

To make your pasted content dynamic, you need to link it to the source table. This way any change you make in the source table will be directly reflected in the pasted table.

We will use the same sample data as earlier.

To link the table in PowerPoint,

Step 1) Open PowerPoint and the Excel workbook.

Step 2) Press CTRL + A to select the table and CTRL + C to copy data.

Step 3) In the PPT place your cursor where you want to paste the table.

Step 4) Go to the Home tab and click on the Paste button arrow from the Clipboard section.

Step 5) From the dropdown, select Paste Special.

Step 6) The Paste Special dialog box will appear.

Step 7) On the left side, select Paste link from the options.

Step 8) Under the As box, select Microsoft Excel Worksheet Object.

Step 9) Press Ok.

Voila! Paste Special will paste the copied table into your PowerPoint presentation. It will be updated in real time and you can double-click it to open the Excel sheet and see the original table.

Insert Excel into PowerPoint as an embedded object

There is another cool method you can use to insert your Excel sheet in PowerPoint – but this method is rather permanent 😛

In the above method, we saw how you can link the Excel and PowerPoint files.

But by embedding both files, Excel will become a part of the PowerPoint slides. It won’t be dynamic but you can access the original Excel file from PowerPoint directly.

The Excel file will become a part of the PowerPoint slides.

We have the same sample dataset as seen earlier.

To embed the Excel file in MS PowerPoint,

Step 1) Open the PowerPoint presentation.

Step 2) Select the position where you want to insert the table.

Step 3) Go to the Insert tab and select the Object button from the Text section.

Step 4) The Object dialog box will appear.

Step 5) Since we already have the Excel file created, select the second option Create from file.

Step 6) Under File Name, click on Browse to locate the Excel file.

Step 7) Once you select it, its path in your computer will be displayed in the box 💻

Pro tip

From the two options you see, select Display as an icon if you want the Excel file to appear as an icon in the slides, Or if you want it to appear as an image with a link to the original file, choose Link to file. If you leave both options unchecked, Excel will display it as a link to the file by default.

Step 8) Press Ok.

Tada! The selected Excel file will appear in your selected position in the PowerPoint as:

Insert Excel into PowerPoint as an image

If you only an image of your Excel data rather than the entire sheet in your slides, then this method is for you. It creates a picture of the data and pastes it into the PPT.

We will use the same sample dataset as earlier.

To create an image in PPT,

Step 1) Select the dataset you want to copy.

Step 2) Press CTRL + C to copy it.

Step 3) Place the cursor in the slides where you want to paste the table.

Step 4) Go to the Home tab and click on the Paste button arrow from the Clipboard section.

Step 5) From the dropdown, select Paste Special.

Step 6) The Paste Special dialog box will appear.

Step 7) On the left side, select Paste from the options.

Step 8) Under the As box, select Picture (Enhanced Metafile).

Step 9) Press Ok.

And it’s done! Paste Special will paste the table in PowerPoint as an image.

How easy was that? 😀

Insert Excel into PowerPoint with VBA

Another easy way of inserting Excel sheets into PowerPoint is to use VBA. It lets you automate different tasks – you can use it to automate copying sheets from Excel to PowerPoint.

You can use VBA to create a macro that copies Excel data and pastes it to the specified location.

We have the same sample data as earlier. Let’s see how to work with VBA below.

Step 1) Press Alt + F11 on your keyboard in the Excel file.

Step 2) The Visual Basic editor will appear.

Step 3) Select Module from the Insert tab.

Step 4) Paste the following code into the window.

Step 1) Close the window.

Step 2) Press Alt + F8 to open the Macros window.

Step 3) Select the InsertExcelTableIntoPowerPoint macro and press Run 🏃‍♀️

Step 4) The Macro will open a Save As prompt for the PPT file with the name Excel Table.

Step 5) Press Ok.

And it’s done! Excel will create a new file and paste the table in that file as:

How fantastic is that? 😀

Conclusion

In this guide, we saw different ways of inserting Excel spreadsheets in PowerPoint. We saw how to insert it as an unlinked object and as an image.

We also saw how you can insert the Excel file as a whole by embedding it and creating a link to a specific portion of the spreadsheet.

If you want to learn more about embedded objects and PowerPoint, read the articles below.

The Best Ways to Insert PDF into Excel: Step-by-Step (2024)

How to Insert Pictures Into Excel Cells (& Make Them Fit)

How to Use Excel’s HYPERLINK Function (Examples)

We hope you enjoyed this piece as much as we did crafting it!