copy data between excel and word

I have created a data sheet in Excel that I need to copy in to Word. Part of the Excel data sheet has merged cells. When I copy the data sheet to Word, the cells are unmerged in the word table. I can live with this, but some of unmerged cells now contain a zero and some do not. I have looked at the formatting of the cells and found no difference. I even copied the format from a section of the data sheet that does not produce extra zeros, with no success.

Any ideas?

Gordon