Skip to content

Pasting rows from Excel: a document table in one Ctrl+V

A customer sends an order as a spreadsheet, a supplier sends a forty-line price list. There is no need to type them in row by row: you can fill a document table from Excel in one go — copy the column of codes and paste it into "Item Code".

How to paste

  1. In Excel, select the column of item codes. If quantity and price sit next to it, select them too; the Excel columns must follow the columns of the document table in the same order, side by side and without gaps (see below).
  2. Press Ctrl+C (on a Mac, Cmd+C).
  3. In the document (for example, an "Invoice"), click the "Item Code" cell of the row where the paste should start.
  4. Press Ctrl+V (on a Mac, Cmd+V).

Each code lands in its own row, and as many new rows are added as needed. For each code the name, unit, price, discount and VAT rate are filled in — exactly as when the code is typed by hand.

The keyboard layout does not matter: Ctrl+V and Ctrl+C work with any layout, Latin or not.

If the cell is already open for typing (the cursor is blinking in the field), pasting a block still spreads the codes over the rows. A single value — one code — simply goes into the field, as if typed.

What happens to the columns on the right

The paste writes the block to the right of the cell you started from: each Excel cell into the next table column, in the order the columns are shown on screen. A column that cannot be edited in the document still counts: the Excel cell that falls on it is simply dropped rather than moved to the neighbouring column.

So the Excel columns must repeat the document's columns side by side. In an "Invoice" the "Item Code" column is followed by "Unit", "Qty", "Description", "Price". To paste the code, quantity and price, leave empty Excel columns where the unit and the description go: code ⇥ empty ⇥ quantity ⇥ empty ⇥ price. A "code ⇥ quantity ⇥ price" block would put the quantity into the unit of measure and the price into the quantity, and the row sum would come out wrong.

Quantity and price pasted into their own columns win over the price from the item card: the document takes the numbers from your spreadsheet. An empty cell next to the code in a new row erases nothing — whatever the item card filled in stays there. In a row that was already filled, an empty cell is written as an empty value: the item card fills the name, unit and price in again, while the quantity becomes 1. A block without a code (for example, only quantity and price over existing rows) writes empty cells too: what was in them is erased, and the row sum is recalculated.

If a code is not in the item register

Rows with known codes are pasted, and for the rest a single window appears on top: "These rows were not inserted" — the row number and what is wrong with it. The row of the unknown code stays as it was before the paste: a row added by the paste stays empty (its number makes the item easy to find in the source spreadsheet), an existing row keeps its previous item, quantity and price. Check such rows before saving: where an item is required in a row, a document with an empty row cannot be saved, while an invoice draft is saved — the empty row becomes a text row in it.

Only rows with an unknown code come as separate lines in the "These rows were not inserted" window. Any other refusal of a row — for example, the currency of the item's price has no exchange rate ("Currency "…" has no exchange rate") — rejects the whole paste: the table returns to its state before the paste and the refusal text appears. Remove the cause and paste the block again.

When pasting is not available

An approved document does not change its table — you cannot paste rows into it, just as you cannot type them. In documents that allow editing certain columns after approval, the paste touches only those columns: the system first asks for permission for each of them.

The browser and clipboard access

Pasting does not need separate permission to read the clipboard. If the browser still asks (Safari sometimes does), allow it — otherwise nothing will be pasted.