What Is Microsoft Excel?
Microsoft Excel is the most popular spreadsheet software, thanks to the multitude of features it comes with. It is a commercial spreadsheet application developed by Microsoft for Windows and Mac OS. It boasts a very useful capability to perform basic calculations, create macros, develop pivot tables, and build graphs.
Like other spreadsheet applications, Excel also uses a collection of cells that are arranged in rows and columns for data management and data manipulation. They can represent data in the form of line graphs, histograms, and charts.
What Is Excel Used for?
Microsoft Excel is usually used to organize data and perform financial analysis. Both small businesses and large firms use it for the following use cases.
- Accounting
- Charting and graphing
- Customer relationship management (CRM)
- Data entry
- Data management
- Financial analysis
- Financial modeling
- Task management
- Time management
Excel for Charts
Excel enables users to utilize amazing charts to provide information in a convenient manner. Usually, you may need to share only an Excel file, but there are use cases where you will only need to share charts in Excel. This happens when you have to use Excel charts in other Office applications. There are multiple ways to do this, but your best bet is to export charts in the form of images. This post can help you to do it in a simple way. Also, let’s find out how you can extract charts as images from Microsoft Excel.
Extract Charts to Other Applications
So, what to do if you need to use charts from Excel in Microsoft PowerPoint or Microsoft Word? Generally, you can right-click on the chart’s end part and choose “Copy”. By making a click on the edge, you can make sure that the whole chart is selected, rather than a portion of it. Next, your chart is copied to the clipboard.
In case you intend to insert the chart into Microsoft Word, open your document, select “Paste”, and click the “Picture” under “Paste Options”. As you can observe, the chart is now part of your Word document as a standard image. There’s even flexibility to resize it as per your needs.
It’s simple to export one or two Excel charts in Office applications. But, what if there’s a need to export multiple charts at once? For that, you need alternative methods.
Paint for Saving Excel Charts
For those who are looking for extracting Excel charts in the form image without inserting it an Office application, the best option to use is Paint. Although there’s nothing wrong in using any image editing application, Paint is easily available in Windows, so you can work with it right away.
Open Excel and copy the chart as you did before. Now, open Paint and press “CTRL + V” for pasting the copied chart in the Paint. Also, crop the chart accordingly.
Moving forward, go to File 🡪 Save As and pick the suitable image format. Name it appropriately and save it as an image type. In this way, you can share the image and use it according to your requirements.
Save Workbook as Webpage
If you are required to export your complete collection of Excel charts as images, the last two methods aren’t usable. Instead, there’s an easy method to do it. All you have to do is to save your workbook as a Webpage type. What this does is that is makes sure that all Excel charts are exported in the workbook in the form of images, after which you can work with them instantly. For this purpose, go to File 🡪 Save As. In “Save As” window, choose the location where you would like to save your workbook and name it accordingly.
Next, choose “Webpage (*.htm, html) from the “Save as type” option and click on the “Entire Workbook” while saving the file. It’s possible that you might get some compatibility messages – don’t pay heed to them.
Now, find the location where your Webpage Archive is saved. It can be recognized through ‘.htm’ extension as comes with a folder that ends with “_files”.
Open the folder and you can find all your image, HTML, and CSS files. These images are actually your Excel sheets from the saved workbook. There’s a copy of each and every image. There’s a full resolution version as well another version with reduced resolution. Use it as per your requirements.
This method where you save the workbook as a webpage allows you to export all the charts in the form of images with an easy method.
Final Thoughts
By following the methods mentioned above, exporting Excel charts becomes all too easy. In case you want to embed charts in Excel, you can follow this link.
If you create, use, and share Excel charts regularly, it’s a good idea to try out Image-Charts. This online tool makes it extremely easy to create a wide array of charts. All you need to is to manipulate a few values and it will return a chart of your choice.
