Export or copy content from Word to Excel

Hi Neha:

Thank you so much for the reply. First let me say I used the word huge incorrectly. The file is only half a meg 128 pages but the amount of formatting (text boxes) makes it very cumbersome to working with. Regardless word is not the app for this information, it need to be in a list.

I've already done a save as plan text imported into excel and then into a sharepoint list. The problem as you can imagine are the text boxes, carriage returns and commas cause all kinds of problems. Copying and pasting process end result with the same problems.

I was not sure if there was some other process that I did not know about.

The end result is going to be a lot of time manually manipulating the data.

Thank you for your time.

Dear PaulMarsh9414,

Greetings! Thank you for posting in Microsoft forum.

May I know how you are planning to export Word content to Excel? There are two methods that I can think of:

1. Save As word document as Plain Text and then in Excel, click Data > From Text, and in Import Text File dialog, select the text file you want to import.
2. Copying data from Word document and pasting to Excel workbook.

The option # 1 can help you import data but there are chances that all the data from Word might not come to Excel and I am afraid that data in text box may not import to Excel at all, the safer option would be option # 2.

If your main concern is “the word doc is HUGE and takes forever to consume when stored in SharePoint DL. I worry the docx is going to become so corrupt the content is unrecoverable”, may I know how big the document is? According to the support article, the maximum file upload size is 250 GB, the file this big can take a lot of time depending on your network connection/speed. If you still worry, you can consider, copying the content to multiple documents to make it smaller in size and as a backup, save one copy to your local computer.

Besides, please note when creating a SharePoint list from Excel, there are some limitations:

1. If the spreadsheet file you're importing doesn't have a table in it, follow the on-screen instructions to create a table in Excel, and then import the table to your list. If you get stuck creating a table, search for "Format as Table" at the top of your file in Excel.
2. Some Excel data types cannot be exported to a list on the SharePoint site. When unsupported data types are exported, these data types are converted to data types that are compatible with SharePoint lists.

Refer: Create a list based on a spreadsheet (microsoft.com)

Export an Excel table to SharePoint (microsoft.com)

If you need any help, let me know, I will be happy to assist further. We will look forward to your reply. Stay safe and stay healthy.

Sincerely,

Neha Singh | Microsoft Community Moderator