Excel 2010: How to Add Images and Objects to a Workbook

You've already learned how to format a worksheet and enter information into Excel, now we're going to show you how to add elements such as images, art and diagrams.

You can enter these elements into Excel simply to associate them with a particular piece of information. For instance, if you were creating a catalog of items in a museum, you might want to include a picture of the item next to its description. But you can also use them to make your projects more visually appealing.

Adding Images

You can easily add images to your Excel documents. To do this, you're going to use the Insert Picture button, which can be found on the Insert tab, in the Illustrations group.

Clicking the Insert Picture button will open a new window. Navigate to the folder that contains the picture you'd like to insert, double-click it, or select it and click Insert. You can insert pictures directly from a scanner or camera too by locating the portable hard drive on your computer.

Anytime you insert a picture into Excel, the Picture Tools/Format tab becomes active. It contains all the tools you'll need to edit your photos. A zoom of the Picture Tools Format Ribbon is below, left and right sides.

Modifying Images

As we mentioned earlier, whenever you insert a picture into MS Excel, the Picture Tools tab automatically opens. This gives you all the tools necessary to modify your image in one convenient place. Or at least all the tools available in MS Excel. Just remember, Excel isn't Photoshop. You won't be able to remove the image of Abraham Lincoln from Mount Rushmore and insert your own. But you will be able to crop it, compress it, and adjust its color, contrast and more.

Removing A Background

The Remove Background tool can be found on the Picture Tools tab. It looks like this:

The pink part of the picture represents the part of the picture that will be removed. Drag the edges over the portion of the picture you want Excel to focus on.

In the next example, we've dragged the box so that only the sky and a portion of the sea are selected.

In the ribbon, we'll see these options:

You can use them to mark the areas you'd like to keep, the areas you'd like to remove, and more. Click Keep Changes when you're satisfied with your selection.

Below is an example of a picture with the background removed.

Note the lines of the cells around the picture.

Cropping an image You might be familiar with the Crop tool

from Photoshop or another photo-editing program. This tool performs the same task (kind of like cutting the edges off a picture with the paper cutter at Kinko's) but in a slightly different manner. In Photoshop, you'd drag the crop tool across your picture to select the parts you want to keep. In MS Excel, you drag the Crop marks at the edges of the picture. Let's see an example of how it works.

Below we've selected a picture in MS Excel and clicked the Crop button in the Picture toolbar. You can see the black crop marks at each corner of the picture.

To crop the picture, click one of the crop marks and drag it to the desired location. In this case, we're going to drag the crop marks so that they include only the whale's tail. The dark shaded areas on the other side of the crop marks represent the parts of the picture that will be removed. When you're ready, click the crop button again to crop the picture.

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You can also use values to crop a picture by using the Format Picture dialog. To access the Format Picture dialog window, click the arrow in the lower right hand corner of the Size group.

Format Picture dialog looks like this:

If the Crop tools are not already active, click Crop in the pane on the right. You can then enter values in the Picture Position and Crop Position fields. Click Close when finished.

Rotating an image

To rotate an image, use the Rotate button:

. In the dropdown menu, select whether you'd like to rotate the picture 90 degrees to the right, 90 degrees to the left, flip it vertically or horizontally.

Clicking the More Rotation Option button at the bottom will launch the Format Picture window.

Enter a value in the Rotation field. In the above example, we have entered 52. This will rotate the picture 52 degrees to the right. If we wanted to rotate it to the left, we would enter a negative number, such as -52.

You can also rotate an image by selecting it and placing your mouse over the handle at the top. When the mouse pointer turns into a circular arrow , just click and drag the top of the picture either right or left to rotate it.

The next button on the Picture toolbar is the Line Style button . This refers to the border around the outer edge of a selected element. You learned about cell borders in an earlier article, and this is no different. To change the border of an image, you can click this button in the toolbar, and then select the desired weight (thickness) of the line. You can also change the border style in the Colors and Lines tab of the Format picture dialog box. Using this method, you can also easily change the color and style of the line as well.

Compressing a Picture

You can reduce the file size of a picture by using the Compress Pictures

command. This reduces the resolution of the picture for quicker downloading and removes unnecessary information. For instance, when you crop a picture, the cropped portions of a picture are still stored in the file, they have only been "hidden."

When you press Compress Pictures button, you will see the Compress Picture dialog box:

With the Select Transparent Color button , you create a transparent area in a picture. To do this, click the button and select the color you want to make transparent by clicking on it in the picture. Below we can see this function in action. The upper picture is the original photograph; below it, we've made the blue in the sky behind the mountain transparent. Note the cell lines showing through.

Use the Reset Picture button

on the toolbar to reset the picture to its original size and format.

Adding WordArt You might be familiar with WordArt from Excel's sister program Word. The WordArt

button can be found on the Insert Tab.

When you click the WordArt button, it unveils the WordArt Gallery, which is a dropdown menu.

Select a style and click OK.

A text box opens in your document with some sample text in it.

Click inside the text frame to enter your own text.

Anytime you enter WordArt into an Excel document, the Drawing Tools/Format tab activates in the ribbon. This gives you easy access to all of the tools associated with WordArt.

Let's take a closer look at the WordArt Styles portion of the ribbon.

With these tools, we can select a new WordArt Style, change the text fill or outline style, or even apply a text effect.

Clicking the Text Effect button gives us the following options.

As you can see, we've selected the Transform options. We're going to choose a wavy one.

The best way to learn all of the options available to you is by experimenting, so as soon as you get a minute, play around with the different text effects.

Inserting AutoShapes AutoShapes are basic shapes such as rectangles, circles and lines. They can also be arrows, connectors, flowchart symbols, and stars. The AutoShape

button can be found on the Insert tab. Clicking it will show you a gallery of options.

We're going to draw an oval by selecting the oval button. We will then drag our shape to the desire size and release the mouse button.

After you insert an AutoShape Excel, you can manipulate it like any other object. You can resize it, rotate it, and change the transparency and stroke size. To launch the Format AutoShape box, click the arrow in the Shape Styles group of the Drawing Tools/Format tab. The Format AutoShape dialog is nearly identical to the Format Picture dialog.

Adding Clip Art The Clip Art button can be found on the Insert Tab. It looks like this:

Clicking the Clip Art button will open on the right side of the Excel window.

You can enter terms to search for Clip Art or you can simply browse the selection. When you've found the Clip Art you want, double-click on it, or move your mouse over it and select the arrow that appears along the right edge of it. Then click Insert. Because Clip Art acts like an AutoShape, you can manipulate and format it the way you would any other AutoShape.

Adding a Hyperlink If you've spent any time at all on the Internet, you're no doubt aware of hyperlinks. Anytime you click text to browse to another webpage, you are seeing hyperlinks in action. Really, that's all hyperlinks are--short cuts to another location. You can create a hyperlink to another file on your computer, to an email address, even to another location within your worksheet. What 's more, existing text, shapes, or images can represent hyperlinks.

To create hyperlink, click the text or image you want to use for the hyperlink, then click the Hyperlink button on the Insert tab.

This is what you will see:

You can browse to the destination file or you can enter it into the Address bar. If the destination is to be somewhere in the current workbook, select Place in This Document. Then select the location (usually a cell) then click OK.

Embedding an Object An embedded object is similar to a hyperlink, except instead redirecting you to a new location, it simply inserts that location into your workbook.

To embed an object into Excel, select a location, then go to the Insert tab and click the Object button. The Object dialog box will open.

Type the source file or locate it using the Browse button and then click okay. If you check the Link to file box, you will create a link between the object and its source file. This means that any alteration to the source file will be reflected in your document.

A linked or embedded object (such as an image inserted into a worksheet) can be displayed exactly as it does in the source program, or it can be displayed as an icon. If the workbook will be viewed online, converting large images to icons will reduce the amount of display space it occupies. Viewers can then double-click the icon to display the full image or information.

To convert an embedded object as an icon, select the Display as icon box.

Then Click OK.