Advanced Word Processing – Embedding

Embed data into a document as an object.

One of the most amazing features of Writer is that it enables us to embed data into a document as an object. This means that we can insert any form of data, say a spreadsheet or a chart or a drawing or any other type, into a document as an object and then work with this data.


AWPCh3 (136)
AWPCh3 (137)
AWPCh3 (138)
AWPCh3 (139)
AWPCh3 (140)
AWPCh3 (141)
AWPCh3 (142)
AWPCh3 (143)
AWPCh3 (144)
AWPCh3 (145)
AWPCh3 (146)
AWPCh3 (147)
AWPCh3 (148)
AWPCh3 (149)
AWPCh3 (150)
AWPCh3 (151)
AWPCh3 (152)
AWPCh3 (153)
AWPCh3 (154)
AWPCh3 (155)
AWPCh3 (156)
AWPCh3 (157)
AWPCh3 (158)
AWPCh3 (159)
AWPCh3 (160)
AWPCh3 (161)
AWPCh3 (162)


To embed data into a document as an object, click on ‘Insert’ from the main menu bar and from the resulting menu, click on ‘Object’. This will display a sub-menu from where you need to click on ‘OLE Object’. This will open the ‘Insert OLE Object’ dialog box.

In this dialog box, we have two views which can be opened with the help of two radio buttons. These are ‘Create new’ and ‘Create from file’. The ‘Create new’ view is used to create a new data object while using ‘Create from file’; we can create an object from an already existing file.

In the ‘Create new’ view, we just need to select the type of data file we need to insert into the document under ‘Object Type’ and then click on ‘OK’. The selected data file will get inserted into the document as an object.

12insert OLE objectIn the ‘Create from file’ view, under ‘File’, choose the file which you need to embed as an object. The ‘Search’ button can be used to browse to that particular file. The ‘Link to file’ checkbox can be checked if you also want to create a link to the original document. After selecting all the values, click on ‘OK’. The selected file will get embedded into the document as an object.

13create from file

Edit, delete embedded data.

As we saw in the last section, there are two ways to embed a data object into a writer document. To create a new data object or to embed an existing file as a data object. To edit or delete embedded data for a newly created data object, we simply need to double-click on the data object. This will bring the data object into its native form. This means that if the data object was a spreadsheet it will start looking like a spreadsheet.

After this, edit or delete the data in the data object as is normally done. When you next save the document, your changes will get saved.

Though the same does not apply to a data object created from an existing file. To edit or delete a data object which has been created from an existing file, you need to edit the original file. After making changes to the original file, when the Writer document will be next saved, the changes will get reflected in the data object.