Excel 2010: The Missing Manual

Chapter 19. Inserting Graphics

Most Excel fans concentrate on numbers, formulas, and charts when they create worksheets. But Excel has another dimension—graphics. In fact, Excel includes a slew of drawing tools that may seem like they belong more in an artsy illustration program than the rigid confines of a spreadsheet. Some of these drawing features are shameless frills that just take up space on the Excel ribbon. Others are genuinely useful, letting you add useful touches and highlight important information with real pizzazz.

Excel’s drawing capabilities fall into the following four categories:

• Picture Handling. These features are what most people think of when they think about graphics. Picture handling lets you take the picture files that you have on your computer and insert them into an Excel worksheet. For instance, if you’ve created the perfect company logo in another program, you may want to place it in a blank spot on your worksheet.

• Clip Art. Clip art graphics are usually cartoonish, themed pictures (like a stack of dollar bills or a drawing of a globe). While you probably don’t need this stuff in most worksheets, Excel’s clip art features are still quite impressive. Instead of limiting you to a small selection of preinstalled image files, Excel lets you search an online collection of thousands of images using subject keywords.

• Shape Drawing (and fancy text). Excel’s shape drawing tools let you create images directly on your worksheet. These shapes include arrows, circles, ...