I there a painless way to paste a Word 2003 table into Excel 2003 so
that the number of columns and rows remain unchanged regardless of
whether the some cells contain carriage returns (paragraph marks).

When I want to transfer a word table to excel, I do this:

Saved from a previous post:

If your cells in your word table contain paragraph mark or linebreak characters,
then excel will bring them over as separate cells.

One way around it is to convert those paragraph marks & linebreaks to unique
characters, then copy|paste and then convert them back to linefeeds.

I like this technique (inside a copy of the word file):
Select your table.
Edit|replace|Special (show More if required)
Find what: (paragraph mark under Special button)
replace with: $$$$$ (if $$$$$ doesn't appear in the table)
replace all

Same thing with Manual Line break (from under Special).

Now copy the table into Excel.

Edit|Replace
Replace what: $$$$$
Replace with: ctrl-j (hit and hold the control key and hit j)
replace all.

You may have to use Format|cells|Alignment tab|check wrap text

Don't forget to close the word document without saving (or hit undo as many
times as necessary).

Mike M wrote:

I there a painless way to paste a Word 2003 table into Excel 2003 so
that the number of columns and rows remain unchanged regardless of
whether the some cells contain carriage returns (paragraph marks).

--

Dave Peterson