Save A Range As A Graphic File
Quite by accident, I
discovered something today that I should have known a long time ago: When you
copy an Excel range, a graphic image of that range is also stored on the
Windows clipboard. As a result, you can paste the clipboard contents into most
graphics programs.
It's pretty simple:
1.
Select a cell or range.
2.
Press Ctrl+C to copy.
3.
Activate a graphics program and press Ctrl+V to paste the image.
4.
Then you can save it to the graphics file format of your choice.
I tried this with IrfanView and Adobe
Photoshop Elements, and it works great. There are, of course, many screen
capture programs available that are more flexible, but this method is quick and
easy.
Here's a simple little
VBA macro that automates the first three steps:
Sub CopyAsGraphic()
Const Viewer As String
= "C:\Program Files\IrfanView\i_view32.exe"
Selection.Copy
Shell Viewer, 1
Application.SendKeys
"^v"
End Sub
Note: If you don't have
IrfanView (or if it's in a different directory), you'll need to modify the
Viewer constant. By the way, I highly recommend IrfanView
as your default image viewer. It's free, fast, and feature-packed.
Start by selecting a
range, a chart, a shape -- or anything else that's selectable in Excel. Then
execute the CopyAsGraphic macro. IrfanView (or your other program) will appear
with the copied data. Then you can do whatever you want with it.
By the way, copying is a
what-you-see-is-what-you-get thing. For example, if the selected range contains
a chart, the chart will also appear in the image.
