If in Excel 2007 you copy a range to the clipboard and paste into Word as a picture you get the worksheet gridlines displayed, which may well not be what you want.
This issue was raised at Smurf on Spreadsheets and has a fairly simple solution.
In their efforts to make all the Excel functionality intuitive and easy to access, Microsoft have placed a “Copy as Picture” command three levels down under the “Paste” button on the Home Tab. The “Copy as Picture” command brings up a dialog box, which has the options “as shown on screen” and “as shown whan printed”, and an image copied as “as shown when printed” does not have the grid-lines.
If you want to save the image as a separate file the easiest way to get a high quality emf (extended meta-file) image, without loss of image quality, seems to be to paste it into Powerpoint, and save it to a file from there.
Does anyone know a better way?
24th Oct 09: See comments below for a link to a “Classic Menu” addin, available for trial or purchase.
In their efforts to make all the Excel functionality intuitive and easy to access, Microsoft have placed a “Copy as Picture” command three levels down under the “Paste” button on the Home Tab.
It depends on the which Excel 2007 you use 🙂
My Copy as picture is just inside the Copy button
http://tinypic.com/r/o53sja/4
LikeLike
Sam – I presume that’s a “Classic” menu add-in. Which one is it, and how do you find it?
LikeLike
“….how do you find it”
Fantastic…But that may be because I developed it…:-)
I sent you a mail check it out
LikeLike
I desperately need this plug-in. I just got moved to office 2007 at work and can’t stand it. 5 years of excel muscle memory out the window.
LikeLike
1. They sure did an effective job of hiding Copy as Picture, didn’t they? I used the 2007 beta for several weeks, and never came across it, until it was pointed out to me.
2. The appearance of gridlines in as printed vs. on screen depends on the View/Hide settings for the window view (in 2003, Tools > Options > View) and for the printout (Page Setup).
3. The picture quality in any case is poor compared to what we are used do in 2003. They’ve decided to antialias everything, leading for example to variable width and variable color gridlines in charts.
LikeLike
Take a screen shot?
LikeLike
Jon – the addin is available from:
http://www.codematic.co.uk/excel-tools/Excel-2007-classic-menu-tab-1.htm
There is a trial version, or you can purchase the full version for next to nothing.
LikeLike
Excel 2003: Hold shift then click Edit – Copy Picture is then on the menu list
LikeLike
I had not seen that before. I do not do a lot with images in 2003. I have not used 2003 in a while now. It was on my daughter’s machine, but that just died. Now she wants a Mac for Christmas.
LikeLike
I know there is a way to get an image into an Excel comment but it requires the image first be saved. I use a product called SnagIt which lets me copy a full screen, window or area. The area copied is brought in to SnagIts editor where you can resize, add a frame, etc. What I want to do is Ctrl-A, Ctrl C that image and paste into an Excel comment without having to save the image first.
Anybody up to the task?
LikeLike