How to convert Excel to JPG, PNG or GIF image

The tutorial explains different ways to convert .xls to .jpg including built-in tools that allow saving an Excel worksheet as an image file as well as free Excel to JPG converters online.

Converting an Excel sheet to an image sounds like something that can be useful in many situations such as designing a whitepaper or tutorial, creating a presentation, or safely sending your spreadsheet data via email.

Whilst you can easily save an Excel file to several formats including PDF by using the standard "Save As" dialog, surprisingly, .jpg is not in the list. Luckily, there exist a handful of different ways to convert Excel to JPEG, both desktop and online, and in a moment you will learn the most useful ones.

It is the most popular technique to convert the currently visible on-screen part of your Excel sheet to JPG or any other image format. Here's how:

  1. Zoom in or out the worksheet so that all data of interest is visible on the screen.
  2. Press the PrtSc key on your keyboard while holding the Alt key.
  3. Open a graphics editor of your choosing, Microsoft Paint works just fine for this purpose.
  4. Paste the copied screen by clicking the Paste button or pressing the Ctrl + V shortcut.
  5. Click the blue drop down arrow in the upper left corner of the Paint window, and then click Save As to save the pasted image. Or, simply press Ctrl + S (a shortcut to save a file that works in most programs).
  6. In the Save as window, type the desired file name, and choose one of the following image formats:
    • JPEG (.jpg) - right choice for complex pictures and photos.
    • GIF - great for creating low-resolution images, which is best suited for simple drawings.
    • PNG - allows creating low-resolution files that load quickly but look crisp and beautiful, it's suitable for almost anything.
  7. Click Save and you are done!

Here's what my sample Excel table exported to Paint looks like:
Convert Excel to JPG by copying the print screen to Paint.

Tip. The Print Screen feature captures everything on the screen, including the ribbon, top menu, scrollbar and sheet tabs. If you want to export only the data, use the Crop function to cut off extra parts before saving an image.

Convert .xls to .jpg (.xlsx to .jpg) with Snipping Tool

It is another amazingly simple way to get an image of your Excel sheet that very few people know about. Snipping Tool is specially designed to take a snapshot of the screen and is included with all modern versions of Windows, from Windows 7 to Windows 10.

Unlike the Print Screen feature, Snipping Tool gives you the following choices as to what to capture:

  • Free-form snip - you can draw any shape on the screen and only that part of your Excel sheet will be included in an image.
  • Rectangular snip - the default option that captures rectangular snips.
  • Window snip - allows capturing a dialog box or a resized Excel window.
  • Full-screen snip - captures the entire screen, the same as Print Screen.

To locate Snipping Tool on your computer, click the Start button, type "snipping tool" in the search box, and then click on Snipping Tool in the list of results. If you don't want to capture a snip immediately, click the Minimize button to send it to the task bar, switch to Excel and open the spreadsheet of interest.

To convert an Excel sheet to JPG (or another image format), perform the 3 quick steps outlined below:

  1. Choose what kind of snip you want to capture. For this, click the little arrow next to the Mode button (in older versions, click the arrow next to New), and select one of the options described above.
    Converting XLS to JPG by using Snipping Tool
  2. Select the area of your sheet that you want to capture. This will immediately copy the selected area to the Snipping Tool window.
  3. Click the Save button, type the file name, choose your preferred image format (.jpg, .png and .gif are supported) and click OK. That's all there is to it!

Tip. To make some edits to the captured image, use the Pen, Highlighter and Eraser tools shown in the screenshot below.
Excel data saved as .jpg image by using Snipping Tool.

Save Excel data as image (.jpg, .png or .gif)

Whatever simple and straightforward the previous methods are, they have one significant limitation - they can only capture the part of a worksheet that is visible on the screen. In some situations, zooming out might help, but not when it comes to capturing a really big table that contains tens or thousands of rows. To get around this limitation, use the good old copy/paste technique, which allows copying any part of an Excel sheet including beyond the scroll areas, and then pasting the copied contents to wherever you want.

To save your Excel worksheet as a .jpg image, perform the following steps:

  1. Select a table, chart, shape or any other Excel data that you want to save as an image.

    Tip. To select a big table, select the first cell and press Ctrl + Shift + Enter to extend the selection of the last used cell.

  2. Press Ctrl + C to copy the selection to the clipboard.

    Alternatively, on the Home tab, in the Clipboard group, click the little arrow next to Copy, and then click Copy as Picture…
    Copy as Picture in Excel

    This will give you the choice of whether to save the copied data As shown on screen or As shown when printed:
    Choose whether to save the copied data as shown on screen or as shown when printed.

  3. Open Microsoft Paint or any other graphics editor.
  4. Press Ctrl + V to paste the copied data.
  5. Save the newly created file as GPEG, GIF or PNG image. Done!

Visually, an Excel table saved as an image is indistinguishable from the original one. If you copy the image back to Excel, it's almost impossible to spot the difference unless you try selecting the data :)
An Excel table saved as an image

Tip. If you'd rather not have gridlines in the image, switch to the View tab and clear the Show gridlines check box before copying the data.

Export Excel to JPG with Camera tool

One more way to quickly take a snapshot of your Excel data is using the Camera tool. A really cool feature of Excel Camera is that it creates a dynamic image that syncs with the original dataset and gets updated whenever the original data changes.

In order to use the Camera tool, you must add it to the ribbon or Quick Access Toolbar manually because it does not show up by default. To have it done, perform these steps:

  • Click the small drop-down button in the upper-left corner of your Excel and select More Commands…. This will open the Options dialog box.
  • On the right pane, under Choose commands from, select Commands Not in the Ribbon.
  • Scroll down the list until you find the Camera command, select it and click the Add button to move it to the right-hand section.
  • Click OK.

Adding the Camera tool to Quick Access Toolbar

Now, you have the Camera button on the Quick Access Toolbar:
The Camera button is added to Quick Access Toolbar.

To save an Excel table as image using Camera, just do the following:

  1. Select a range of cells you want to capture. To make a photo of a chart, select the cells surrounding it.
  2. Click on the Camera
  3. Click anywhere in the worksheet where you want to place a snapshot. Bingo!

Now, you can make the image bigger or smaller by dragging the sizing handles. Or, you can apply different Picture Styles by using the Picture Tools tab that appears as soon as you select the image. For example:
Apply different Picture Styles.

Tip. By default, Microsoft Excel adds a border to the image, if you don't want it, click Picture border > No outline on the Format tab, in the Picture styles group.

When you are happy with the image design, you can export the Excel camera output to anywhere. For this, simply select the picture and press Ctrl + C to copy it (or right-click and then click Copy). After that, open another application, say Paint, Word or PowerPoint, and press Ctrl + V to paste the copied image. Or, you can assemble bits from several worksheets onto one page, and then save it as image by using any of the methods described above. Just remember that only a linked picture on the sheet is "live". When copied outside of Excel, it becomes a regular image and it won't update when the original data in the worksheet changes.

Excel to JPG converters online

If you have a lot of Excel files to be exported to images, you can save time by committing the job to some online Excel to jpg converter. Below you will find just a couple of many free converters available on the web.

Convertio - Convert XLS to JPG online & free

It is my favorite online converter that supports a great variety of document and image formats including Excel to JPEG conversion.

Here's how you can convert Excel to JPG online:

  1. Select the source .xls or .xlsx file from your computer, Google Drive, Dropbox or drag it on the page using the mouse.
  2. Choose "to JPG" or select another image format (over 20 different formats are supported such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, BMP, GIF, etc.)
  3. Download the converted JPG file or save it directly to your Dropbox or Google Drive (the best bit is that they do not ask for an email address to send the output to).

Convertio - Excel to JPG converter online

Note. When using a free version of Convertio, the maximum file size is 100 MB.

To give it a try, please follow this link: Convertio Excel to JPG.

Zamzar - free online Excel to JPG conversions

It's another popular online service that can convert your Excel files to JPG as well as to many other formats. With Zamzar, it's not possible to download the converted files directly from the web-site, they send the output by email, which is not my personal preference. Apart from that, it's a nice free XLS to JPG converter with an intuitive user interface:
Zamzar - another free Excel to JPG converter online

To see it in action, please follow this link: Zamar XLS to JPG.

If for some reason neither of the above tools suits you, you can find plenty more similar services by typing something like "convert xls to jpg online" or "xlsx to jpg online" in your preferred search engine.

This is how you can convert Excel to JPG online and desktop. I thank you for reading and hope to see you on our blog next week!

13 comments

  1. but how to send high resulution

  2. Thank u

  3. Nice for camera
    but can we use in coding in vb6

  4. i think that you mean is Convertio not Convertino

  5. Oh my god, thank you so much for the camera thing! It's hands down the best method to preserve the formatting. Kudos!

  6. When I try to save an excel to PDF the pictures come out 1/4 the size on the PDF

  7. Thanks, your saved me a lot of stress

  8. Hi,
    I dearly want to know, that Ive prepared a simple dashboard in excel, now I want to display it on my computer's dashboard screen, 1- How to do this ?

    2- and when I change data in the main excel file, the dashboard charts should change automatically according to the values changed in excel file... can anyone please help...

  9. Hi ,I'm looking for .PNG to excel converter any idea please let me know.

    Thanks,
    Pavan.

  10. Hi Svetlana,

    I hope you are fine.

    Can you help me with the issue of adding two range name in Name Manager having the below description:

    Village 1, 2 & 3 having the province name of A
    School 4, 5 & 6 having the same province name "A"

    I need to save both Villages and Schools with the same Province Name individually, as mentioned above. Village Names and Schools Names will be used in the same Excel Worksheet but in different tabs (Different Sheets).

    The problem is I cannot save the School Names with the same name as I saved the Village Names already.

    Thanks,

  11. Hi, no need for a response, just wanted to add to your list the "send to one note tool".
    The shortcut: windows logo + s
    this will freeze the screen and give you a cursor to select the area you want to clip.
    Then it will be pasted in One Note as an image that you can, then, export or save, but only as a .png. Of course you can always paste it on word and change the format there.
    Thank you for your list.

    • Hi Alex,

      Thank you for this useful information. It has never occurred to me to use OneNote to make an image of Excel, but it works beautifully!

      BTW, on Windows 10, the OneNote screen clipping shortcut is Windows + Shift + S.

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