The tutorial shows different ways to insert an image in Excel worksheet, fit a picture in a cell, add it to a comment, header or footer. It also explains how to copy, move, resize or replace an image in Excel.
While Microsoft Excel is primarily used as a calculation program, in some situations you may want to store pictures along with data and associate an image with a particular piece of information. For example, a sales manager setting up a spreadsheet of products may want to include an extra column with product images, a real estate professional may wish to add pictures of different buildings, and a florist would definitely want to have photos of flowers in their Excel database.
In this tutorial, we will look at how to insert image in Excel from your computer, OneDrive or from the web, and how to embed a picture into a cell so that it adjusts and moves with the cell when the cell is resized, copied or moved. The below techniques work in all versions of Excel 2016, Excel 2013, Excel 2010 and lower.
All versions of Microsoft Excel allow you to insert pictures stored anywhere on your computer or another computer you are connected to. In Excel 2016 and Excel 2013, you can also add an image from web pages and online storages such as OneDrive, Facebook and Flickr.
Inserting a picture stored on your computer into your Excel worksheet is easy. All you have to do is these 3 quick steps:
To insert several images at a time, press and hold the Ctrl key while selecting pictures, and then click Insert, like shown in the screenshot below:
Done! Now, you can re-position or resize your image, or you can lock the picture to a certain cell in a way that it resizes, moves, hides and filters together with the associated cell.
In the recent versions of Excel 2016 or Excel 2013, you can also add images from web-pages by using Bing Image Search. To have it done, perform these steps:
If you are looking for something specific, you can filter the found images by size, type, color or license - just use one or more filters at the top of the search results.
Besides adding images from Bing search, you can insert a picture stored on your OneDrive, Facebook or Flickr. For this, click the Online Pictures button on the Insert tab, and then do one of the following:
The easiest way to insert a picture in Excel from another application is this:
Normally, an image inserted in Excel lies on a separate layer and "floats" on the sheet independently from the cells. If you want to embed an image into a cell, change the picture's properties as shown below:
That's it! To lock more images, repeat the above steps for each image individually. You can even put two or more images into one cell if needed. As a result, you will have a beautifully organized Excel sheet where each image is linked to a particular data item, like this:
Now, when you move, copy, filter or hide the cells, the pictures will also be moved, copied, filtered or hidden. The image in the copied/moved cell will be positioned the same way as the original.
As you have just seen, it's quite easy to add a picture in an Excel cell. But what if you have a dozen different images to insert? Changing the properties of each picture individually would be a waste of time. With our Ultimate Suite for Excel, you can have the job done in seconds.
Inserting an image into an Excel comment may often convey your point better. To have it done, please follow these steps:
If you are inserting a picture into an existing comment, click Show All Comments on the Review tab, and then right-click the border of the comment of interest.
If you want to Lock picture aspect ratio, select the corresponding checkbox like shown in the screenshot below:
The picture has been embedded into the comment and will show up when you hover over the cell:
If you'd rather not waste your time on routine tasks like this, Ultimate Suite for Excel can save a few more minutes for you. Here's how:
In situations when you want to add a picture into the header or footer of your Excel worksheet, proceed with the following steps:
As you have just seen, Microsoft Excel provides a numbers of different ways to insert an image into a cell or in a specific area of a worksheet. But did you know you can also copy information from one Excel sheet and insert it in another sheet as an image? This technique comes in handy when you are working on a summary report or assembling data from several worksheets for printing.
Overall, there are two methods to insert Excel data as picture:
Copy as Picture option - allows copy/pasting information from another sheet as a static image.
Camera tool - inserts data from another sheet as a dynamic picture that updates automatically when the original data changes.
To copy Excel data as an image, select the cells, chart(s) or object(s) of interest and do the following.
That's it! The data from one Excel worksheet is pasted into another sheet as a static picture.
To begin with, add the Camera tool to your Excel ribbon or Quick Access Toolbar as explained here.
With the Camera button in place, perform the following steps to take a photo of any Excel data including cells, tables, charts, shapes, and the like:
Unlike the Copy as Picture option, Excel Camera creates a "live" image that synchronizes with the original data automatically.
After inserting a picture in Excel what is the first thing you'd usually want to do with it? Position properly on the sheet, resize to fit into a cell, or maybe try some new designs and styles? The following sections demonstrate some of the most frequent manipulations with images in Excel.
To move an image in Excel, select it and hover the mouse over the picture until the pointer changes into the four-headed arrow, then you can click the image and drag it anywhere you want:
To adjust the position of a picture in a cell, press and hold the Ctrl key while using the arrows keys to reposition the picture. This will move the image in small increments equal to the size of 1 screen pixel.
To move an image to a new sheet or workbook, select the image and press Ctrl + X to cut it, then open another sheet or a different Excel document and press Ctrl + V to paste the image. Depending on how far you'd like to move an image in the current sheet, it may also be easier to use this cut/paste technique.
To copy a picture to clipboard, click on it and press Ctrl + C (or right-click the picture, and then click Copy). After that, navigate to where you wish to place a copy (in the same or in a different worksheet), and press Ctrl + V to paste the picture.
The easiest way to resize an image in Excel is to select it, and then drag in or out by using the sizing handles. To keep the aspect ratio intact, drag one of the corners of the image.
Another way to resize a picture in Excel is to type the desired height and width in inches in the corresponding boxes on the Picture Tools Format tab, in the Size group. This tab appears on the ribbon as soon as you select the picture. To preserve the aspect ratio, type just one measurement and let Excel change the other automatically.
Of course, Microsoft Excel does not have all the capabilities of photo editing software programs, but you may be surprised to know how many different effects you can apply to images directly in your worksheets. For this, select the picture, and navigate to the Format tab under Picture Tools:
Here is a short overview of the most useful format options:
To restore the original size and format of the image, click the Reset Picture button in the Adjust group.
To replace an existing picture with a new one, right-click it, and then click Change Picture. Choose whether you want to insert a new picture from a file or online sources,
locate it, and click Insert:
The new picture will be placed exactly in the same position as the old one and will have the same formatting options. For example, if the previous picture was inserted into a cell, the new one will also be.
To delete a single picture, simply select it and press the Delete button on your keyboard.
To delete several pictures, press and hold Ctrl while you select images, and then press Delete.
To delete all pictures on the current sheet, use the Go To Special feature in this way:
This is how you insert and work with pictures in Excel. I hope you will find the information helpful. Anyway, I thank you for reading and hope to see you on our blog next week!
32 responses to "How to insert picture in Excel: fit image in cell, add to comment, header or footer"
Thanks, Svetlana. for your post.
Thanks
I am trying to add a picture to a comment. I do not have all of the options for formatting. The only option I have in formatting is font. Could this be because I am using Excel 2010? Any ideas?
Hello, Stephanie,
please take a closer look at this point of the article above. It shows step-by-step example screenshots on how to add a picture to a comment.
If this doesn't work, please consider trying our Comments Manager tool. It has an option to quickly add any picture to the cell comment in Excel.
Please note that the tool comes as a part of our Ultimate Suite collection of add-ins. Feel free to download and install its fully-functional trial version from this web-page:
https://www.ablebits.com/downloads/index.php
You can find the instructions on how to work with Comments Manager on this help-page.
Hi there! I am trying to insert an image into a cell and I followed your directions exactly above and it's still not working right. It still "floats" on the spreadsheet and is not truly in the cell if that makes sense. I have already resized and selected "move and size with cells" but it still doesn't work right. Any thoughts? I am using Office Professional Plus 2013. Thank you!
How can I print exile with title bar using my Lexmark printer?
Hey,
the function to change the picture is suddenly gone and I cant find any function for this.
When inserting a new picture I do an overlay now. But the quality is very bad after saving the file as a pdf to send it to a customer.
In my Excel file that i have been using for a year I inserted photos but now they are locked, I cannot access, delete, change them nor can I insert new ones . How to proceed?
After I insert a picture in a cell, how do I refer to it so that it appears in a specific cell on another worksheet based on a drop-down list?
We insert logo images on our Excel docs (Office365 vers). Unfortunately, when others open the doc, that logo is looking 4 to 5 times larger in print preview and print. I've tried to reformat the size, to no avail. How does this get corrected? I don't want to change every doc to a pdf. Thanks.
Hello,
I want to make picture image as grouping where is this group icon available .
This was extremely helpful, thank you.
I Insert the picture in the cell and also lock the aspect ratio. When I try to insert the picture into another cell, using a basic formula e.g. with =$A$1 only a 0 appears. (Note that the picture is located in A1. The picture is NOT shown.
What is wrong???
how to add picture from other cell?
Thanks
How to fix one singe jpeg image into the entire worksheet without stretching the image.
You didn't explain how to post an image from one Excel document into the header of another. Which is exactly what I'm trying to do. Excel won't let you paste the image. The image isn't saved as a file so I can't browse to import it. It only exists as a logo on another spreadsheet. This must be a limitation with Excel.
Thanks with appreciate
I want to use excel to organize an event.
I want to add Artist first and last Name, contact info, Status of her art piece (it is in Studio, or needs to be picked up etc. , I want to add an image of the art piece and item # and a cell for the artists 5 short bio that would include their website if they have one.
When it comes to putting the artist name and bio and image on line to buy can I use the excel doc I just mentioned above. OR will the photo be too small etc.
Your thoughts
Hello Victory!
I hope you have studied the recommendations in the above tutorial.
Read carefully:
https://www.ablebits.com/office-addins-blog/2017/05/10/insert-picture-excel-cell-comment-header-footer/#insert-picture-cell
If you have other questions, don't hesitate to ask.
How i change picture from vertically/fit to cell to horizontally/fit to cell and can i set shotcut for this?
In printing several pages having picture logos, the picture breaks, only picture on page 1 comes out well. What could be the cause?
It's obvious that excel is not great at everything, mediocre at best, at most things.
It's what happens when a monopoly product has no competitors.
Handling of graphics & picture files is unintuitive, incomplete, errors are unexplained.
Lovely eh?
Hi,
If you explain your problem in more detail, I will try to help you.
After inserting the image into a cell. Is it possible to save the excel as a csv and import into I design to create a merged file with text and images?
Hello!
CSV is a plain text file. Therefore, apart from letters and numbers, it contains nothing else.
ALL VEDIO & PHOTOS FROM 2018 TO 2019 RECOVERING
You say click on the footer. I can't. The header comes up with a left, right and centre box. I can click in those, I can add a header, but there are no footer boxes for me to click in.
Hi Neil,
At the bottom of the page, you should see the text "Add footer". Click this text and 3 footer boxes will appear.
I am trying to copy an inputted picture from one sheet to another , dragging a jpeg or bitmp image in to a sheet that copies to another sheet and can be changed .... overview : i created a form a general information templet about my sales people with an added picture in the corner of the form, after the general info is done a profile picture is added and migrated to an out put formatted sheet ... is there a way to have excel do this ??? thanks
This is a major help. Thanks for this :)
Great site. Cheers for posting.
cool