Camera tool is your way of creating visual reference in an excel sheet. It is one of the useful and hidden features of excel. Here is how it works. You specify a rectangular area in your workbook and camera tool creates a mirror image of that area as a drawing object. You can move it or resize it. And whenever the contents of original rectangular area changes (charts, drawings or cell values) the mirror image changes too.
How to add camera tool to standard toolbar?
In order to use camera tool, you must add the tool to a tool bar in excel menu area. Here is how you can do that:
- Go to menu > tools > customize
- In the dialog go to “Commands” tab and select “tools” in categories.
- Scroll down in the commands area until you see a little camera tool
- Now drag and drop this in your tool bar as shown below
How to use excel camera tool?
We will use camera tool to create a micro-chart in excel.
- First make a normal chart.
- Now select the cells surrounding the chart
- Click on camera tool
- Now click any where in the worksheet and excel places a snapshot of the range you have selected
- Resize it until you get the microchart effect.
- Bingo !
- Btw, excel adds a border to the camera tool output. You can remove it by using drawing tool bar
Bonus tip: Alternatives to camera tool
Another alternative to camera tool is to use the image and indirect references technique we have learned in conditionally hide or show charts post.
Read earlier spreadcheats as well.
11 Responses to “Use Alt+Enter to get multiple lines in a cell [spreadcheats]”
@Chandoo:
One more useful trick.......
In a column you have no. of data in rows and need to copy in the next row from the previous row, no need to go for the previous rows but entering Alt + down arrow, you will get the list of data, (in asending order), entered in the previous rows...
This is another great tip. I use this all the time to make sense of some *very* long formulas. As soon as the formula is debugged I remove the break.
Great tip Chandoo!
I use this feature often and it has even gotten the, "how did you do that" response.
Thanks!
@Ketan: Alt+down arrow is an awesome tip. I never knew it and now I am using it everyday.
@Jorge, Tony: Agree... 🙂
[...] Day 1: Insert Line Breaks in a Cell [...]
how can we merge a two sheet.
excellent idea. Chandoo you are genious
Hi chandoo,
I have used ctrl+enter to break the cell. But I did not get the result.
Please tell me how can i break the cell in multiple lines.
Hi, Ranveer,
Its not Ctrl+enter to break the cell, use Alt+Enter to make it happen.
hi Chandoo....
how we can use Alt+Enter in multiple rows at the same time please reply hurry i have lot of work and have no time and i m stuck in this. 🙁
Alt+J worked once 🙁
So I found another more reliable way:
=SUBSTITUTE(A2,CHAR(13),"")
Where A2 is the cell that contains the line breaks which the code for it is CHAR(13). It will replace it with whatever inside the ""