Ask Owen

I saw an Excel sheet on my colleagues desktop that had an image in a comment box. I can’t figure out how he did it, as every time I try to paste an image in nothing happens. How did he do it?

I’m presuming you’re talking about Excel 2007 as the technique I’m going to describe doesn’t work with older versions. You cannot actually paste an image in there, but you can set one up as a background image for the comment. Here’s what you do:

First of all right click on the comment cell and click on Insert Comment. Right-click on the border of the comment box and click on Format Comment. Click on the Colours and Lines tab, then the dropdown menu for Color in the Fill section and then Fill Effects. Click on the Picture tab and then on the Select Picture button. Find the image and click on OK. It’s a good idea to select the option “Lock picture aspect ratio” to prevent the image from being distorted and click on OK.

You can put any picture you want in there, a picture of a cat, maybe one of the POS systems you’re selling or even a photo of yourself if you really want. As I said, this will only work on Excel 2007. It won’t work on previous versions.

Related Questions

• What is Maya and is it right for me?
  Someone at work mentioned a package called Maya to edit my images. Is this the right thing for me? Autodesk Corporation's Maya is a 3D Modeling and Rendering program, similar to Lightwave, 3DMax, P...
• Where can I get a decent free painting package?
  I did a graphic editing course recently using Adobe Photoshop, but it's too expensive for me to buy. Can you recommend something decent that I can use for free? Paint.NET is an impressive image-edi...
• Can I emulate an iPad on my PC?
  I'm building a new website and would like to make sure that people using an iPad can see it properly. Besides going out and buying an iPad, is there anything I can do to make sure the site displays ok...