Suite-Talking Spreadsheets

Microsoft, Lotus, and Corel all brag about how well the members of their respective software suites work together, but much of this is made possible by Windows' OLE protocol. The spreadsheets act as OLE 2.0 servers, so you can drag and drop worksheet ranges from one part of a sheet to another, to a different worksheet page within a file, to another open file, or out of the application window altogether and into a word processor, presentation program, or other document. You can drag from a worksheet application to a word processor from the same company (from Excel to Word, for example) or to a competing worksheet that can act as an OLE client (e.g., from Quattro Pro to Lotus's W ord Pro).

The range that's dropped into the word processor becomes a spreadsheet object. When you double-click on it, the document -- the spreadsheet fragment itself and the text that surrounds it -- remains in place, but the word processor's menu and toolbars are replaced by those of the host spreadsheet application. You modify the style or content of this table using the tools available in the worksheet, not those of the word processor. Clicking outside the spreadsheet object restores the word processor's normal menu.