Sometimes you want to add data from a Google Sheet to a Google Doc or Slide. Although you can’t insert cells and rows directly from Sheets, you can create a table, chart, or slide, and then insert it into your document or slide.
Note: We’ll be using Google Docs in these examples, but inserting a chart in Slides works in much the same way.
First, you’ll need to generate a chart in your Google Sheets spreadsheet. You can do this by turning on your Google Sheets home page and opening a new or existing spreadsheet.
After entering some data and storing it in a spreadsheet, select all the cells and click Insert > Chart. Choose a chart type, make final adjustments and customizations, then close Sheets; don’t worry, Google saves after each step. We have an article on generating charts in Sheets if you’d like more information.
Once you’ve created a chart in Google Sheets, turn on Google Docs and open a new or existing document to insert your chart. Click “Insert”, select “Chart” and then click “From Sheets”.
From the list of available spreadsheets, select the one you want to use and then click “Select”.
The next window lists the charts on that sheet that are available for import. Click on one and then click “Import”.
You also have another option here. See the “Link to spreadsheet” checkbox on the screenshot above? If you enable it, the chart in your document or slide is linked to the original chart in your sheet. Make changes to your sheet, and you’ll see the chart in your document or slide automatically updated to reflect those changes. Clear that checkbox if you don’t want that to happen; in that case, the chart is frozen in time on your slide or sheet. If you want to update it, you will need to re-insert it.
If you leave the link option enabled, at any time you can click “Refresh” to sync the chart or table data with your Sheets document.
Because these charts are saved as images, a fun quirk when using the embed function is that if the original isn’t scaled or sized to see all the data, some data points might get cut off when updating.
voila! Your Google Sheets data is now embedded in your Google Doc.
If for some reason you no longer like your chart updating and linking to your Sheets document, click a chart, then click the chain icon, then click “Unlink” again to remove the feature of linkage.
This disables the ability to make changes to Sheets and have them automatically appear within your document without having to re-insert it. If you want an updated chart or want to link again, you need to repeat the above steps one more time.
