One image used in many cells?

[jamesinnewcastle]

Hi All

I have a sheet where all the rows have a product image. There are quite a few rows so loads of images - all thumbnail size.

However, the user often needs to duplicate the sheet in other tabs, so in theory all the images are copied too and my file size gets bigger and bigger!

Is there a way where I can keep the just the images on one sheet (tab) and then refer to that image absolutely from each of the product range sheets? I've tried the 'look up a countries flag given a name in a drop down box' examples on the internet but what I need to do seems simpler and the flag examples are hell to setup.

Cheers
James

 

[jasonb75]

There is no 'simple' way to do what you want.

You need to have an image as a placeholder anywhere that you want an image from another sheet to be shown, so no less images than you had before.
All the extra stuff needed in the background to make it work will actually increase your file size even more.

The only thing that might decrease file size is to have no images in the file, but stored in a folder, then add them to the sheet with vba when the sheet is activated and delete them when it is de-activated.
This is not a practical solution though, it would take more work to set up than the flag example, be prone to error if the sheet layout changes and leave you waiting for the images to load every time you switch tabs. Those are just the problems that come to mind on the assumption that it will even work to start with

 

[jamesinnewcastle]

Hi Jason

I suspected as much. It's a shame as it the structure of 'put in this cell the contents of this other cell' is so basic to any spreadsheet that having a right click option such as 'and any picture as well' seems almost something that you would expect.

I've found that the size doesn't seem to expand as much as I had thought though when the tabs are copied though which is good.

Cheers
James

 

[jasonb75]

The image is not 'content' of the cell though, it is an additional layer on top of it.

Adding extra options like that would increase the general workload of everything (each time something is processed a check would need to be made to see if that option is selected or not), the increase might not be much but comparing practicality to likely frequency of use you can see the reasons behind not having it.

Thinking of a slightly different approach. Would the copies that people create have rows deleted, or row heights changed?
As long as all af the images will be the exact same size and in the exact same place on every copy of the sheet, then I have something in mind that might work.

Also, are there any other objects on the same sheets, shapes, combo-boxes, etc?