How to Convert a Word Document to Excel

Excel can’t open a Word document directly, so converting one means moving its data across. If the data is in a Word table, select the table, press Ctrl+C, click a cell in Excel, and press Ctrl+V. If the data is plain lines of text, save the document as Plain Text in Word and bring it into Excel with Data > From Text/CSV.

Applies to: Word and Excel for Microsoft 365, 2024, 2021, 2019, and 2016 on Windows, with notes for Excel for Mac. Checked against Microsoft Support on October 6, 2026.

Pick the method that fits your document

There is no single convert button, because a Word document is a page of text and a workbook is a grid of cells. The right route depends on how the information is laid out in Word.

What the Word document contains	Best method
One or more tables	Copy the table and paste it into Excel
Lines of text with the same separator on every line, such as tabs or commas	Save as Plain Text, then import with From Text/CSV
A short list you have already pasted into one Excel column	Split it with Text to Columns
Loose text that needs a little tidying before it lines up	Turn it into a Word table first, then copy the table
A document you want to keep whole, such as a letter or contract	Embed it in the workbook as an object

Before you start

• Work on a copy of the Word document so the original stays untouched.
• Check the table for extra line breaks inside cells. Microsoft notes that extra carriage returns in a Word table cell can create extra rows after you paste into Excel, so remove them first.
• Make sure the area of the worksheet you will paste into is empty. Pasted data replaces whatever is already in those cells.
• Give each column a short heading in the first row. Sorting and filtering are much easier in Excel when every column has a name.

Copy a Word table into Excel

This is the quickest route and the one to try first. Each cell of the Word table lands in its own worksheet cell.

1. Open the document in Word and select the rows and columns of the table that you want. To take the whole table, drag from the first cell to the last one.
2. Press Ctrl+C to copy the selection.
3. Open the workbook in Excel and click the cell that should become the upper-left corner of the data, for example cell A1 on a blank sheet.
4. Press Ctrl+V. The table appears in the worksheet, one Word cell per Excel cell.
5. Select the Paste Options button that appears next to the pasted data. Choose Match Destination Formatting to use the worksheet’s own formatting, or Keep Source Formatting to keep the look of the Word table as closely as possible.
6. Save the workbook as an Excel file so the result is stored separately from the Word document.

If the document has several tables, copy them one at a time. Put each one on its own sheet, or leave a blank row between them, so their columns don’t get mixed together. Microsoft’s own walkthrough is on the Copy a Word table into Excel support page.

If you copy ordinary paragraphs instead of a table, each paragraph is pasted into a single cell in one column. That is fine for a simple list, but anything with several pieces of information per line needs one of the methods below.

Save the document as plain text and import it

Use this method when the data is not in a table but every line follows the same pattern, such as a name, a tab, and a phone number. The character that separates the pieces is called a delimiter, and Excel uses it to decide where one column ends and the next begins.

Step 1: Save a plain text copy in Word

1. In Word, select the File tab, then select Save As.
2. Type a new name in the File name box so you don’t overwrite the original document.
3. In the Save as type box, choose Plain Text, then select Save.
4. If the compatibility checker appears, select Continue.
5. In the File Conversion dialog box, leave Windows (Default) selected and select OK. If Word warns that text marked in red will not save correctly, choose Other encoding and pick a different encoding from the list.

A plain text file keeps the words and numbers only. Fonts, colors, borders, and pictures are left behind, which is what you want for clean data.

Step 2: Import the text file into Excel

1. Open Excel and click the cell where the data should start.
2. On the Data tab, in the Get & Transform Data group, select From Text/CSV.
3. In the Import Data dialog box, find the text file you saved, select it, and select Import.
4. Look at the preview. Each piece of information should sit in its own column. If everything is in one column, change the delimiter setting in the preview to the character your file uses.
5. Select Load to place the data on a new worksheet. Select Load To if you want to choose where it goes, or Transform Data to clean it up in Power Query before it reaches the worksheet.

Microsoft documents this route in Import or export text (.txt or .csv) files. A worksheet can take up to 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns, so even a very long document will fit. The same import screen is used for comma-separated files, which we cover in our guide on how to import a CSV file into Excel.

Older route: the Text Import Wizard

You can also go to File > Open, choose Text Files in the file type list, and double-click the .txt file. Excel then starts the Text Import Wizard, which has three steps:

1. Choose Delimited if a character separates the items, or Fixed width if the columns are lined up with spaces.
2. Check the delimiters your file uses and confirm the result in the data preview. Turn on Treat consecutive delimiters as one if there are several separators in a row between items.
3. Set a format for each column: General, Text, or Date. Choose Do not import column (skip) for anything you don’t need, then finish.

In current versions, the wizard is a legacy feature on the Data tab. To add it, go to File > Options > Data and select From Text (Legacy) under Show legacy data import wizards. It then appears under Data > Get Data > Legacy Wizards.

Split pasted text with Text to Columns

If you have already pasted a list and each line is squeezed into one cell in column A, you don’t need to start over.

1. Select the cells or the column that holds the pasted text.
2. Select Data > Text to Columns.
3. In the wizard, select Delimited, then Next.
4. Check the delimiters that separate your data, such as a comma or a space, and watch the preview to confirm the split. Select Next.
5. Choose where the split data should go on the worksheet, then select Finish.

The columns to the right of your list should be empty before you do this, because the split pieces are written into them.

Turn loose text into a Word table first

Sometimes it is easier to fix the layout in Word, where you can see the whole document, and then use the copy-and-paste method.

1. On the Home tab in Word, turn on Show/Hide so you can see the tabs and paragraph marks in the text.
2. Put a tab or a comma wherever a new column should begin, and a paragraph mark wherever a new row should begin. If the text itself contains commas, use tabs.
3. Select the text, then select Insert > Table > Convert Text to Table.
4. Under Separate text at, choose the separator you used. Check that the number of columns shown is what you expect, then select OK.
5. Copy the new table into Excel as described above.

Importing on a Mac

Copying and pasting a table works the same way in Word and Excel for Mac, using the Mac copy and paste shortcuts. For a text file, Excel for Microsoft 365 for Mac uses this path:

1. Select Data > Get & Transform Data > Get Data > From File, then choose From Text/CSV.
2. Choose the text file and select Import.
3. Select Load, or open the list beside it and select Load To to pick an existing worksheet or a new worksheet.

Check and clean up the result

Compare the first and last rows in Excel with the Word document, and count the rows to make sure nothing was dropped or split. Then look for these common leftovers, all of which Microsoft lists as normal cleanup after pasting from Word:

• Numbers stored as text. A small green triangle in the corner of a cell means Excel is treating the number as text, so it won’t add up. Select the cells, select the warning icon, and choose Convert to Number.
• Missing leading zeros. Excel drops the zeros from the front of ZIP codes, part numbers, and similar IDs because it treats them as numbers. Format the empty cells as Text before pasting (press Ctrl+1 and choose Text on the Number tab), or set the column to Text during import. Our article on how to stop Excel removing leading zeros covers the options.
• Long numbers that changed. Excel keeps 15 digits of precision, so anything longer, such as a 16-digit card or account number, must come in as text.
• Dates that look wrong. Check that dates were read as dates in the order you expect, especially if the document was written with a different regional date format.
• Several values in one cell. Use Text to Columns to spread them across separate columns.
• Extra spaces. Stray spaces before or after a value can stop sorting and lookups from matching, so remove them.

If the result is not what you wanted, undo the paste or the split in Excel, or close the workbook without saving, and try again. The Word document is never changed by any of these methods, as long as you saved the plain text version under a new name.

Troubleshooting

• Everything landed in one column. The text was not in a table, or the import used the wrong delimiter. Run Text to Columns on the column, or import again and pick the delimiter that matches your file.
• One Word row became several Excel rows. A cell in the Word table contains more than one paragraph. Remove the extra line breaks in Word and paste again.
• The pasted data looks cluttered. Excel pastes text from other programs with its formatting. Use the Paste Options button and choose Match Destination Formatting, or press Ctrl+Alt+V to open Paste Special and paste as text only.
• There is no green triangle on numbers stored as text. Error checking may be off. Go to File > Options > Formulas and turn on Enable background error checking.
• Strange characters appear after importing. The encoding chosen when you saved the text file doesn’t match the characters in the document. Save the plain text file again and choose a different encoding in the File Conversion dialog box.
• You can’t find the Text Import Wizard. It is hidden by default in newer versions. Turn it on under File > Options > Data, as described above, or use From Text/CSV instead.
• A work or school file won’t copy or save. Some organizations protect documents so that copying or saving in another format is blocked. Ask the document owner or your IT administrator for access rather than looking for a way around it.

Frequently asked questions

Can Excel open a .docx file directly?

No. Word formats are not among the file types Excel can open. Copy the data across, or save it as plain text and import it.

Will the formatting carry over from Word?

With copy and paste, choosing Keep Source Formatting under Paste Options keeps the table’s look as closely as Excel can manage. A plain text file carries no formatting at all, so you format the data again in Excel.

Do images, headers, and footers convert?

Only what you select and copy goes across, and a plain text file contains text only. Headers, footers, and pictures in the document are not part of the table data, so add anything you need to the workbook separately.

Can I put the whole Word document inside a workbook instead?

Yes. In Excel, go to the Insert tab, select Object in the Text group, open the Create from File tab, and select Browse to pick the document. Check Display as icon if you want an icon instead of the first page. This embeds the document as an object; it does not turn its text into cells. To go the other direction, see how to embed an Excel file in Word.

What about a scanned document?

A scan is a picture of text, not text. It has to be turned into real, selectable text or a real table first; after that, the methods above work normally.

Should I use an online Word-to-Excel converter?

The built-in methods do the same job without uploading your file to someone else’s server. Avoid upload-based converters for anything containing personal, financial, or work data.

Does this work the same on a Mac?

Copy and paste works the same way. Importing a text file uses the Get Data path shown in the Mac section above.

Once the data is in Excel and cleaned up, select any cell in it and turn it into a table or add a filter so you can sort and total the columns. If you expect to repeat the job, keep the plain text import route in mind, because it gives the most consistent columns each time.