How to Insert PDF into Excel

Last Updated: June 22, 2023
puneet-gogia-excel-champs

- Written by Puneet

Microsoft Excel can insert PDF documents into the spreadsheet without affecting the data set. Users can insert or embed PDF documents within the spreadsheet when they want to share and refer to that PDF document along with the spreadsheet.

This tutorial will guide you on how to insert PDF files quickly in any spreadsheet.

Insert PDF into Excel as an Object

You can insert the PDF document as an object in the spreadsheet.

And once added, whenever you share or send that Excel file to any user, that user will get that embedded PDF and the Excel file and can open and save that PDF.

  1. First, open a workbook where you want to insert the PDF document as an attachment.
  2. After that, go to the “Insert” tab and click on the “Text” icon and then click on the “Object” option.
    text-icon-in-ribbon
  3. Here, in the “Object” dialog box and click on the “Create from File” tab and then on the “Browse” button to choose the PDF file from your system.
    create-from-file-tab
  4. After selecting the file, select the “Display as icon” option so that the file will get embedded as an object and click OK.
  5. If you want to sync the changes in the embedded PDF, which you will do in the original PDF document, please also select the “Link to file” simultaneously.
    select-display-as-icon
  6. After embedding the PDF, you can resize that to the size of the cell by hovering the mouse cursor on any round-shaped borders and then dragging and shrinking it to fit into a cell.
    embedded-pdf-document
  7. Now, to lock the icon of the embedded PDF document within the cell, right click on it and click on the “Format Object” option.
    lock-the-embedded-pdf
  8. In the end, in the “Format Object” dialog box, go to the “Properties” tab and then select the “Move and Size with cells” option so that the icon will get locked and move within the cell only and click OK.
    select-move-and-size-with-cells

Other Ways to Insert PDF into Excel.

  1. If you have only a single-page PDF document, then you can convert that as an image (jpg, png) and can add that image to Excel.
  2. If you have a data table in the PDF document and you want to insert that data table into Excel, convert the PDF into Excel format using the converter.