Are you sure the column widths for both pasted objects are the same in Excel? When pasted as an Excel item, the object does not become a Word table and is thus not subject to Word's table re-sizing behaviour.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Hi Paul,

Yes, I am working from one spreadsheet, with maybe 200 rows. If I paste one section from, say Row 20 to Row 35, then another from Row 150 to Row 170, they will often paste into Word with different widths, even though they are from the same sheet. is it possible that some glitch in the formatting of the spreadsheet has led to this problem, do you think?

I doubt the worksheet format is an issue (unless, perhaps, there are horizontally-merged cells involved.

In my testing I am unable to reproduce the behaviour you describe when pasting different blocks of cells from the same columns. Differences in text formatting, text wrapping & vertically-merged cells, for example, make no difference to the size of the pasted object or its column widths in Word.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]