SubscribeWhat is camera tool and how to use it? [spreadcheats]
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.
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At Chandoo.org, I have one goal, "to make you awesome in excel and charting". This blog is started in 2007 and today has 350+ articles and tutorials on using excel, making better charts. 
In Excel 2003 you can also invoke the camera by copying the area you want to view, then hold the Shift key while you press the Edit menu. When you do that you get a “Paste Picture Link” option.
When you show people that it can seem like magic.
Cool trick. Have never used it and tried it for the first time. Its neat!!!! Thanks!!!
Nice feature. Thanks for sharing knowledge.
@Dan… That is fantastic. I never knew about this wonderful way of getting camera snapshots. Thanks for letting us know about this
@Aerogeek: you are welcome.
@Struzak: Thanks and welcome to PHD blog
You may use any shape or text box too and link the data of desired cell thru function bar. If you want to rotate the data with the rotation of the shape, need to apply same therapy as mentioned by Dan.
Check it out !
Much better than the Camera command. That sounded great but when pasting 2nd shot, the 1st updates to the same. Result: 2 shots of the same thing!
@Megs.. I am not sure I got your question… Camera tool gives a live preview, so when the underlying range changes, the camera image too.
Hi,
Excelent site!!
I`m using these technique with a graphic, but, I have two problems ( with Excel 2003):
1.- The snapshot loose resolution when a resize to small size.
2.- After I place the snapshot in the new location (other sheet), the plott area, always resize by itself, to the small size posibble.
@MV… thank you and welcome to PHD.
1. you should try to preserve the aspect ratio of the original range in the resized camera tool output to avoid poor fidelity.
2. The plot area resize could be due to some other issue (like opening an excel 2007 chart in 2003). I have never experienced such an issue with camera tool outputs.
An extension to Dan’s idea,
copy the cell values and paste special as link in power point (Paste Special > Paste Link > MS Excel Worksheet Object). The values in the power point will change when changed in excel. This can be used when dashboards have to be presented everyweek ( or everyday ?!) , but you are lazy enough to paste a snapshot from excel to powerpoint every time your presentation is due