Learn an Excel Feature: Picture Links (or Camera Snapshots) Posted on October 19th, 2010 in Excel Howtos , Learn Excel - 24 comments Today I want to introduce a new excel feature to you, called as Picture link. Well, picture links are not really new, they are called as camera snapshots in earlier versions. They provide a live snapshot of a range of cells to you in an image. So that you can move the image, resize it, position it wherever you want and when the source cells change, the picture gets updated, immediately. What is the use of Picture Links or Camera Snapshots? At the outset picture links may seem like a useless feature. But they are pretty powerful. Here are few sample uses for picture links: In dashboards & reports: Usually in dashboards, we need to combine charts, tables of data, conditional formatting etc., all in one sheet. When the size of these are not uniform, aligning them on output sheet could be a huge pain. This is when you can use picture links. First create the individual portions of dashboard in separate worksheets. Then, embed picture links to these portions in final dashboard. Re-size them and align as you see fit. See this in action: Project management dashboard in excel. In micro-charts & sparklines: While Excel 2010 has native support for sparklines and other micro-charts, if you want to create a micro-chart in earlier versions of excel you have to use trickery. This is where picture links can help. You can make a regular chart and take a picture link of that. Then resize the picture so that it fits in to a small area. See this in action: Micro-charts using camera tool. In Dynamic Charts: Since picture links are nothing but images with a formula assigned to them, you can easily construct dynamic charts & dynamic dashboards using these. See this in action: Dynamic chart using camera tool, Dynamic dashboard using camera tool In shared workbooks: When you share a workbook with a colleague or boss, a common worry is what if they change formulas or edit something. This is where picture links can be of great use. You can embed a picture link of actual data so that no one can edit it. How to insert a picture link in Excel – 3 step tutorial: To insert a picture link to your data, just follow these 3 steps: Select the cells. Press CTRL+C Go to a target cell. From home ribbon select Paste > As picture > Picture link option (see image below) That is all. Your picture link is live. Move it or play with it by changing source cells. Do you use Picture Link / Camera Snapshot ? I have been a fan of picture links / camera snapshots ever since I learned about them. I have used them in various dashboards, reports, workbooks to wow my clients, bosses and colleagues. However, one problem with picture links / camera snapshots is that, they do not print well. So I avoid using them for workbooks that get printed alot. What about you? Do you use picture links often? Share your experience, tips and ideas using comments. Read more quick tips to become awesome in excel, in less than a minute. PS: Donut to Hui for telling me about Picture links feature. Financial Modeling School is now Open – Register today! Excel Links – Happy Birthday Edition Spread some love, It makes you awesome! Share on email Share on print Share on facebook Share on delicious Share on google_plusone Tags: camera tool, Excel 101, Excel Howtos, Learn Excel, picture link, quick tip, spreadsheets, using excel Home: Chandoo.org Main Page ? Doubt: Ask an Excel Question 24 Responses to “Learn an Excel Feature: Picture Links (or Camera Snapshots)” Squiggler says: October 19, 2010 at 11:37 am I love picture links, great for overlaying on graphs, I also find them great for building thermometer graphs by combining shapes, text, conditional formatting, sparklines in creative ways! Its also a great way to shrink items into a smaller space or even change the aspect ratio of tables! Reply Tom says: October 19, 2010 at 1:23 pm Nice tip. Thanks, Chandoo. I’m starting to run into some file size issues with my dashboard project (it’s actually a series of dashboards, with one for each department). Do the picture links use more or less data than actual cell contents? It would be nice if you could do this with charts as well. Reply Hui... says: October 19, 2010 at 2:02 pm @Tom Remember you can save files as an Excel Binary Workbook They are generally a lot smaller than .xlsx/m files goto: File, Save As, Excel Binary Workbook Reply Tom says: October 19, 2010 at 2:54 pm @Hui… Thanks for the tip. I’ll have to give this a try. What is the tradeoff for saving as an Excel Binary Workbook? What do you lose? Reply Rich says: October 19, 2010 at 4:47 pm I use these frequently in my workbooks, but I often end up with a flicker effect. Is there a way to eliminate that? Reply cALi says: October 19, 2010 at 5:16 pm As Rich says, I drop using picture links due to the poor quality of the image, is there any way to choose .bmp to generate them? Reply Gregory says: October 19, 2010 at 5:33 pm I’ve never really used picture links, but your suggestion about putting them in a dashboard could be useful. Especially if they aren’t printed regularly. Reply Hui... says: October 19, 2010 at 11:57 pm @Tom You lose size and load time my .xlsb file is 70% of original size in my test file and opens in about 70% of time Reply Tom says: October 20, 2010 at 1:29 pm @Hui…Thanks! Reply Mark says: October 20, 2010 at 7:24 pm This is an awesome feature. Most of my dashboards are just a series of camera snapshots. I move and re-size them to fit space. It is like having all of the best features of publisher or powerpoint in an excel presentation. Reply Roger says: October 20, 2010 at 9:24 pm I use pictures a lot in spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentation, but everytime I update or refresh the original date I have to go through the machinations of special copy, pasting and resizing to fit. How can I get the pictures to update automatically once the original data/information has changed? This would help me and my crew of 32 here so much if we could solve this without doing a macro or special gyrations. Help please kind Masters of Excel. Reply Rohit Jindal says: October 21, 2010 at 5:18 am Hi Chandoo, I have been using this feature till now succesfullly in all my dashboard reports as well as sending snapshots through email (we use Lotus). Just wanted to share a quick way to take a snapshot as an alternative..Hope you will find it useful- Excel- 2007 1- Go to customization of Quick access toolbar 2- Go to ‘All Commands’ 3- Search and select ‘Camera’ 4- Click Add>> This should add Camera tool to the quick access toolbar. Feel free to use just like any other tool on the quick access toolbar from there on!! Excel- 2003. This feature is also available in 2003 through quick access toolbar customization. Do let me know your inputs. Rohit Jindal (Rj) Reply Excel: Picture Links in Excel 2003 | 2toria says: October 21, 2010 at 5:37 pm [...] was reading Chandoo’s article on Picture Links in Excel and was quite impressed, as I hadn’t come across them [...] Reply Celebrating India’s Worldcup Cricket Victory – In Excel Dashboard Style! | Chandoo.org - Learn Microsoft Excel Online says: April 15, 2011 at 8:58 am [...] used: The click to select as described in on-demand charts article, conditional formatting, picture links, more picture links, LARGE formula. The most difficult part of this was to get a moving arrow that [...] Reply Dianne says: July 14, 2011 at 5:40 pm Hi Chandoo, I use this quite regularly, but I can’t seem to figure out how to get my project related snapshot/s to show up when specific project is selected from drop down list. I use the index function for all the other information, but the snapshot/s puzzle me. Dianne Reply Nick says: September 30, 2011 at 1:37 am Hi I am new to the site and doing dashboards. I have 4 sets of tables, formated as tables, with monthly totals for each subsidiary. When I copy and try to paste as a picture link it is greyed out. When I remove the Table format i can create picture links for the tables individually but not as a group. I am using Excel 07. Any reason why this is happening? Reply Marian Whitcomb says: November 9, 2011 at 8:50 pm Hi, thank you for this wonderful site! I am a garden designer and want to have a plant order on one worksheet, and photos in the second with a hyperlink from each plant name on page 1 go to the photo of it on page 2. Any thoughts? Thanks Reply Hui... says: November 10, 2011 at 1:16 am @Marian Do you want to just jump to the Photo or Show the Photo on the Order? Reply Marian Whitcomb says: November 10, 2011 at 11:46 am Hello Hui, thanks for the quick response, and sorry not to be clearer…I want the hyperlink for, say, day lily (blue writing) on sheet 1 to be clicked and to highlight or select a photo on sheet 2. Eexcel wants a cell address, but the photo “floats,” and I cannot select it. Is this because the photo is an object, maybe? Can I anchor or embed the formatted photo to a cell address, or better, a range? Alternatively, could a hyperlink select just a page tab and I can put one photo per page (less elegant). Thanks, am really excited about the possibilities for Excel. Thank you so much! (using 2010) Reply Free Picture Calendar Template – Download and make a personalized calendar today! | Chandoo.org - Learn Microsoft Excel Online says: January 2, 2012 at 8:39 am [...] Picture links – to display picture for any given month [...] Reply René says: March 22, 2012 at 2:13 am All a feature which I use is the snipping tool rather than the camera tool. Just my two cents Reply Rob says: March 22, 2012 at 4:42 pm I have the same problem mentioned by Rich. Is there a way to stop the excel from flickering when using the camera/paste picture link function? Reply Jeevan says: July 17, 2012 at 10:22 pm The picture does not appear in the print preview..is there any solution to this?? Reply Excel Dashboard Examples - 66 Dashboards to Visualize Excel salaries around world | Chandoo.org - Learn Microsoft Excel Online says: July 30, 2012 at 10:39 am [...] Using Picture Links in Excel [...] Reply Leave a Reply Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Website Confirm you are NOT a spammer Notify me of when new comments are posted via e-mail