Previously, we wrote about embedding an Excel worksheet into a Word document in the Microsoft Office 2007 suite (see the post, Embed an Excel Worksheet into Word 2007). You can do the same thing in the free OpenOffice.org 3.2 suite.

To embed a new, empty Calc spreadsheet into Writer, put the insertion point where you want to embed the spreadsheet in your Writer document. Select Object | OLE Object from the Insert menu.

Inserting an OLE Object

On the Insert OLE Object dialog box, make sure the Create new radio button is selected, and select OpenOffice.org 3.2 Spreadsheet from the Object type list. Click OK.

Insert OLE Object dialog box

A blank Calc worksheet is inserted into Writer at the insertion point and activated. You can enter data and format the cells into this worksheet just as you would if you were working in Calc. The toolbars and menus change from the Writer toolbars and menus to the Calc toolbars and menus, providing you with the Calc tools.

New, empty spreadsheet embedded into a Writer document

The following image shows the cells from the above image formatted into a nice looking table.

04_new_embedded_worksheet_with_data

To get the Writer toolbars back, click anywhere in the Writer document off the embedded Calc worksheet. To edit the embedded Calc worksheet again, double-click on the embedded object.

You can accomplish the same task using an existing Calc worksheet, embedding a worksheet already containing data into a Writer document. To do this, first click off any other embedded Calc spreadsheets you may have already inserted to get the Writer toolbars and menus back.

Select Object | OLE Object from the Insert menu as you did before. On the Insert OLE Object dialog box, select the Create from file radio button, and click the Search button.

05_insert_ole_object_from_file

On the Open dialog box, navigate to the location of the Calc spreadsheet file you want to embed. Select the file and click Open.

Selecting an existing file to embed

The path to the file to be embedded is inserted into the File edit box. Click OK.

File to be embedded selected

An object containing the data from the existing worksheet is inserted at the insertion point, but not activated for editing like the new, empty worksheet was earlier. Double-click on the inserted object to edit the cells.

Existing spreadsheet in Writer document

You can edit the data embedded from an existing Calc spreadsheet just like you can in an embedded new, empty spreadsheet.

09_spreadsheet_from_existing_file

When you click once on an embedded spreadsheet object, the toolbar for formatting an object displays. You can format an embedded spreadsheet object just the same as formatting an image you insert.

OLE toolbar for formatting the embedded object

As you can see, it is very easy to embed spreadsheets into Writer documents and edit and format them in the OpenOffice.org suite and one of the best features of the suite is that it is free!

by Lori Kaufman