Clearly and Simply

Tag: excel camera object

  • Visual Workbook Navigation with a Chart Carousel

    A Carousel of Charts as a visual and interactive Navigation Control for Microsoft Excel Workbooks

    726 words, ~4 minutes read

    Visual Navigation IntroIf your Excel workbook has many output worksheets, you should provide your users with an option to facilitate the navigation within the model.

    Sure, the user always has the option to right click on the arrows left to the first tab and select any worksheet from there, but this requires that she/he exactly knows where to find what.

    It is best practice to give the users guidance regarding the content of your model and to enable them to easily navigate to the sheets they are most interested in. Usually, you insert an extra worksheet containing a list of all tabs with hyperlinks or buttons to quickly navigate to those sheets.

    You are interested in something more visually compelling? If so, you came to the right place. Today’s article provides a visual workbook navigation control with a chart carousel dynamically displaying the content of the relevant sheets. The user can easily browse through all views, select the desired one and get to the view with one mouse click. As always, the post comes with an example workbook for free download.

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  • Excel Oddity: Camera Objects bloat File Size

    Camera objects (aka linked pictures to cell ranges) can considerably increase the size of an Excel workbook. Why?

    Vintage Camera - Photographer: Peter Miller (flickr.com)Camera Objects (aka linked pictures) are an easy-to-use, powerful and flexible technique in Excel, especially for making dynamic and interactive charts and dashboards.

    I learned this technique years ago from Charley Kyd’s fantastic e-book Dashboard Reporting With Excel.

    My good friend and Excel MVP Chandoo also wrote several articles about the Camera Object (all articles with ‘camera tool’ tag on chandoo.org).

    The feature may still not be as known among Excel users as it should be, but there are so many very good tutorials available that I do not need to write another one.

    As great as they are, Camera Objects always had a few issues (printing, merged cells, distorting captured charts, etc.) as Charley points out here: A New Excel 2010 Camera Tool Bug, and a Workaround.

    Today’s article will describe not a real bug, more an Excel oddity or annoyance regarding Camera Objects: the extensive use of Camera Objects can let the file size of your workbook explode, especially if they are linked to cells with inserted images sitting on top. I took a closer look into this and today’s post describes what I found out.

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