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The idea behind the Excel Camera tool is simple: You highlight a range of cells, and everything in that range is captured in a live picture. Everything means charts, conditional formatting, shapes, whatever you see in that range of cells, and so on. The cool thing about the Camera tool is that you're not limited to showing a single cell's value like you are with a linked text box. And because the picture is live, any updates made to the source range automatically change the picture.
In Figure 1, the user entered some simple numbers and created a chart based on those numbers — nothing fancy.
Figure 1: Enter some simple numbers in a range and create a basic chart from those numbers.
Following are some basic steps for using the Camera tool. The goal here is to create a live picture of the range that holds both the numbers and the chart.
1. Highlight the entire range containing all the information you want to capture.
In Figure 1, the highlighted range is A3–D11.
2. Click the Camera tool icon (which looks like a little camera).
3. Click the spreadsheet in the location where you want the picture to be placed.
Excel immediately creates a live picture of the entire range, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: A live picture is created via the Camera tool.
Changing any number in the original range automatically causes the picture to update.
You can use the Camera tool to perform the following functions:
- Consolidate disparate ranges into one print area: Sometimes a reporting model gets so complex that it's difficult to keep all the final data in one printable area. This often forces the printing of multiple pages that are inconsistent in layout and size. Given that dashboards are most effective when contained in a compact area that can be printed in a page or two, complex models prove to be problematic when it comes to layout and design.
The Camera tool can be used in these situations to create live pictures of various ranges that you can place on a single page. For example, a workbook can contain data from various worksheets. The secret is that these are nothing more than linked pictures created by the Camera tool.
- Rotate objects to save time: Because the Camera tool outputs pictures, you can rotate the pictures in situations where placing the copied range on its side can help save time. Certain charts are relatively easy to create in a vertical orientation but extremely difficult to create in a horizontal orientation. The Camera tool to the rescue! When the live picture of the chart is created, all you have to do is rotate the picture using the rotate handle to create a horizontal version.
- Create small charts: Although you can resize charts easily enough through other means, you typically would have to spend time tweaking the scaling, font, and other elements on the chart after you get the chart small enough. Because the Camera tool creates a picture that keeps its pixel ratios intact while you resize, it allows you to achieve small chart sizes without tweaking a single chart element.
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