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I have come across and interesting trick in Excel and I have no idea how they did it. There is an object on sheet 1 (which Excel ids as a picture) which shows a range of cells from sheet 2. The thing is that the picture is live. You change the data on sheet 2 and it changes on sheet 1. This is a great way to put header info on a sheet without worrying about messing up column widths. Anyone know how this was done?

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It’s called a picture link.

Copy the cells as normal. Instead of pastingthe cells, hold down the shift key and click on edit in the menu. This will bring up a “hidden” menu item called Paste Picture Link.

Tony

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Actually if you hold down the shift key before you copy the selection, you get some options which might be useful. If you have gridlines shown, you can exclude them being included in the image by selecting As shown when Printed. If you select the default then the gridlines are included and printed if the picture is eventually printed. You also get the option to copy as a bitmap, which means that the image no longer updates based on the underlying cells.

There is a camera tool available by going to Tools, Customize and selecting Tools from the command tab. Drag the camera to a toolbar, and it can be used by selecting your cells and then clicking the camera. Then move the cursor to the point you want the image pasted and click.

Andrew C

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Andrew,

I can’t find the camera (Excel 97 SR2 or XL2K)

My Tools, Customize dialog box has 3 tabs- Toolbars, COmmands, Options.

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Geoff,

Sorry about the lack of clarity. Go Customize, select the Commands Tab, and in the categories section scroll down until you find Tools, then on the right hand side (commands) scroll down until you find a little camera, its down towards the bottom of the list. It’s been there since Excel 5 if not earlier.

Whether using the camera button or the Shift Menu method (more options) it can be very useful, especially for combing different parts of a Workbook onto a single sheet for printing out, or even on the screen where formatting might now allow certain ranges to fit adjacently. These pictures update from the underlying cells unless you copy as a bitmap.

Good luck,

Andrew

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ANdrew,

Got it. Thanks. A very useful tool.

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Just another use or two for this feature. If have you text on the clipboard , and select ShiftEdit, Paste Picture, The text is pasted into a text box in Excel. Can be handy, especially for getting the pearls of wisdom from the lounge onto your worksheet to follow instructions.

You can also use it to embed (Paste Picture) or link (Paste Picture Link) sections of a word document.

Andrew

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Another tip/trick with this is that you can set the range to be a NAMED range rather than just a range.

Having a named range allows using variable range names using something OFFSET or INDIRECT to change the actual range of the picture with formulas.

I like to use it to display a “Data Table” of points on an XY Scatter that changes with the data.

Steve

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