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Excel 2007 Paste Picture Link

Excel has the ability to link a picture to underlying cells in such a way that any changes to the  underlying cells changes the picture. The best way to explain this is with an example.

 Here we have a spreadsheet with a graph drawn and the amortization table shown here.  What we can do, I can highlight this area, copy it and then just anywhere else I am going to paste special it and I am going to go down here and where it says “Paste as Picture” I am going to say “Paste Picture link”    and what you’ll see is that we have an exact replica. What is important to note, however, is that this is a picture so when I click on it you’ll see the picture item appears and if you want you can treat it like a picture – you can actually  swivel it and I can  actually make it smaller if I want, for example I can do that. What this means is that I can go and perhaps under this graph I want to have all this information. The key here, though is let’s say we change these numbers. I am going to change that to 150000 – watch what happens to the picture. When I click Enter you’ll see the picture changes because this picture is linked to this section and any changes made will be reflected in the picture. Just to emphasize the relationship let’s say we wanted to show that this graph data is actually the closing balances – you can go here and highlight them and change them all to a bright yellow and you’ll see no matter what has happened in the cells will happen to your picture.

In Excel 2007 you can access it  via the way I showed  which is with the ” Paste as Picture”. There is also a camera icon and I’ll first show you how it works and then how to get it. For example, let’s highlight the same area again, I’ll click my camera and I’ll go where I want to put it, click it and there we go – it’s linked and the only difference is that it has got a line around it. There is no easy way to get this camera icon.  Unfortunately you have to go via the Excel Options, go Customize, look under All Commands, and then scroll down until you find the Camera icon and then add it as I have already done. This is  for Excel 2007.  

In Excel 2003 the tool is there – you just have to remember some things. Here we have a graph – I want to say take that area, I copy it, click on another cell and then if I  hold my shift key down and then push the Edit you’ll see there are some new items that pop up and one of them is “Paste Picture Link”, click it, and now we have got the same thing- it is  a picture, we can put it where we want  and we can work with it as if it was a picture and if a change happens – so let’s make that 20 – watch what happens here, you’ll see it changes.  So basically it is exactly the same. So you can do it that way.

There is also the camera icon. In order to find it – View; Tool Bars; Customize; and under  Commands under the Tools you just need to go down until you find the Camera – it is generally  about half way down. Click it and drag it maybe and put it in one of your icons and now it is available to you. So you just do the same thing – highlight,  click camera and put it somewhere and there we go.