I looked and found some related threads but not quite the same.  I just want to create a simple table in excel that I can easily modify in either SW or Excel.  I created a blank table in SW drawing and did a save as into excel (using office 2007 so saved as .xlsx).  I began to fill in my fields and then wanted to merge some  but my merge icon is grayed out :-/   I thought that was odd so just for the heck of it I create an identical table in excel and, as expected had no trouble merging fields.

I see this table is referred to as "shared" in excel and figured this might be the problem.  I went back into the drawing and merged the cells in there but then I have to save it again from the drawing, but I have work done in excel.  UGH.  I prefer to create and edit in excel simply because I can work faster and have more options.  Then I can bring it into the drawing complete - or so I hoped.  OK, all the time I just spent writing this out and I suppose I could have created it in SW :-/

Can I create in excel FIRST and bring into SW?  I do not see an option to bring in ANY excel format (xls, xlsx, csv, etc.)