Photo Directory in Excel

January 24, 2008 8:12 AM

I'd like to create what amounts to a photo directory in Excel, and be able to sort by last name. Is this possible? If so, how?

I'm trying to create a document with names and photos of all the (50-ish) candidates we've interviewed for a number of positions. In the past I've done this in Word, which is fine for each of the nine interview days, but now I want to combine all of the folks into one document and be able to sort the list a couple different ways (by last name, interview date, etc.). I thought Excel would be great for this, but I can't seem to get it to make the photo the actual contents of a cell. It only places the photo on top of the spreadsheet.

Can anyone help? Oh, and I should mention that I'd like to be able to just copy and paste the photos in from the 9 word documents I have. I don't have them saved as individual files.

posted by uvaleg to technology (6 comments total)

I'd create a directory called "candidate pictures" and drag and drop the Word pictures into there.

Then I'd "Insert | Hyperlink" and link to that file. That way it would stay in the cell rather than float above it like an object.

This puts the pictures one step out of the worksheet, but it's still a point-and-click sort of thing.
posted by unixrat at 8:26 AM on January 24, 2008

You could make a private Flickr album and tag each person based on name, date, etc.

If you are stuck on using Excel, I would suggest at least using hyperlinks (file:///c:/canidatephotos/candidate01.jpg) instead of trying to embed pictures.

On preview, what unixrat said.
posted by JeremiahBritt at 8:28 AM on January 24, 2008

The reason I'd like to use excel is I already have each candidate's name, school and interview date in an excel doc, so it would be nice to just stick the photo next to each person. The hyperlink idea might work, except what happens when I try to open the document on a computer where the 9 associated documents aren't saved?
posted by uvaleg at 8:34 AM on January 24, 2008

How about inserting the pictures into background sheets in the same workbook and hyperlinking to that sheet? It's rather inelegant and your workbook will get pretty massive if you put 50 BMPs* in there.

* IIRC Word stores it's images in that crap-awful BMP format.
posted by unixrat at 8:41 AM on January 24, 2008

This question intrigued me. I found an answer of sorts on this forum that involves using something macro-y to embed the image into a cells comment so that it shows up when you hover your mouse.
posted by kev23f at 12:26 PM on January 24, 2008

If you know the photos are all going to of be the same dimension (i.e. portraits), then just size all rows in the spreadsheet to the same height, and the column containing the images to the correct width.

Then insert the pictures as floating images over a suitably sized cell. They aren't actually the contents of the call, but they will still move and stay in the correct row when the whole table is sorted, or if you insert another row.

Hint for both Excel and Word ... use "Insert>Picture>From File" rather than copy-pasting of images to avoid massive filesizes. No idea why, but it works!
posted by saintsguy at 1:46 PM on January 24, 2008