Using Images in Mac Numbers Spreadsheets

You can use photos and other images in your Numbers spreadsheets, but not as values in cells. Learn how you can decorate a sheet with them, or use them in a clever way in a table to display a featured image.
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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how you can use images in Numbers' spreadsheets.
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There are several different ways that you can use images in your Numbers' spreadsheets. It's kind of limited and it doesn't do what a lot of people want but they can still be useful. The main way that you would use images is simply to decorate a spreadsheet. So, for instance, say I just wanted to have an image in here to make this look more interesting then I could simply drag and drop an image right into the document and then I could resize it by grabbing the dots and place it somewhere in the image. You could see this in several of the templates that Apple provides. For instance, this recipe template here has a picture of the finished dish. This travel planner here has several different photos. You get the idea. 
You can also place an image inside of a shape. Just go to the Shapes here. Let's choose something like a teeshirt and then if you were to drag and drop an image into the shape you can then resize it. Or if I just wanted to have the image in a circle I could drag and drop the image into the circle, shrink it down and then I could use a border, for instance, around it like that.  You can even use the Lift Subject or Remove a Background feature. Notice here that there is white in this image here so you see how it blocks out part of the spreadsheet there. But if I go to Format Image I can Remove Background and it very nicely gets rid of that solid background there so now I have a nice image that I can place somewhere and you could see how it's transparent all around the object. 
But when most people think of using images in spreadsheets they think of actually putting an image inside of a cell. This is a little tricky to do in Numbers because you can't actually have an image as the value of a cell. The value of a cell has to be either text, a number value, or a date. It can't be an image object. If you were to drag an image into a cell it appears to place it there. You can see it there. What's actually happening is that's not actually the value of the cell. If you go to Format, Cell you can see the Fill is now set to Image Fill. The image is that object. The value is actually still something you can enter in. So I enter in a number and you could see it still puts the number there. That's the value of the cell. The image is just the background. Instead of a solid color or gradient you have this image. You can choose to have it scale to fit, scale to fill so it is going to increase either the width or the height to fill everything. You can have it Tile and then with Tile you would scale it down and you can only go so far here. If I increase the size of the cell then you could see it. So if you had a small image it would be a kind of tiled background pattern. You can stretch to have the image fill both horizontally and vertically like that and you can do original size like that. But that image is definitely not the value of the cell. I see here there is no value there at all or if I put it in a number you could see the value of the cell is that number there, not the image. The image is just the background. You can't perform calculations on it. You can't add it to formulas. You can't really do anything with it. It's just decorative. 
But that doesn't mean that it is not useful. For instance, in this table here I could have the product name, like something like a quantity, and then an image here. So I can use this blank cell here with an image on the background as kind of a visual aid to see what is actually there. If I were to make the rose a little bit bigger, let me select all of the rose except the header, drag the line there and increase the size of all of them, you could see it is now a little clearer what this image is and if you have a bunch of different products or maybe pictures of students in the classroom or whatever it is you're trying to represent in your spreadsheet an image can be a helpful visual even if you can't perform calculations. 
Now because you can actually have some value in the cell other than the image that is the background you can do some interesting things. For instance, I'm going to do Control Command Space and look for a checkmark and grab this checkmark here. Then I'm going to go to Format and then Text and set the text centered and centered vertically as well so the checkmark is there. I'm going to increase the size quite a bit and I'm going to set an outline and a shadow as well, with no offset so the shadow is kind of in the middle. Go with a 50% opacity there and then set the color for the text to white. So I've got a white checkmark with a black outline and a black shadow like that. So I can use this to easily overlay the image. Let me add a bunch of other images here. 
So here I have a simple inventory table and it just has images for each of the products that are represented here. I still have this checkmark over this first one here. But we can actually use a formula instead. Like, for instance, if I were to go to this cell and do equals and do, say, the quantity times 2, you could see how it calculates the value. Just a normal cell just that there is an image at the background. So instead of just having a checkmark and text there let's do a formula. I'm going to add another table and make this a one cell table. What this will represent is the product I want to highlight. So I'll do this product right here, the third one. So I'll turn this into a formula. I'm going to say IF and then the product name here equals this here and I'm going to set it to Preserve Row, Preserve Column, so it is an absolute reference. Then do the Checkmark. So in quotes I'm going to use that same Checkmark right there and then if not just quotes with nothing inside it. So I'm going to paste this formula in all the rest of these. But unfortunately if I try to Fill or I try to Copy and Paste it's going to take that background color as well. So instead I'm going to go and Edit and Paste and Match Style. Now, it will actually keep the background image and you can see the checkmark appear here. I want to make that nice and centered and white and all of that so I'm going to select all those cells again. Go to Text, go and set the color to White. Go and set Centered and Centered and then change the outline. Make sure I have outline. Make sure I have a shadow with no offset. 50%. Then I'm going to change the size of all of these to make it big.
So now I get that checkmark over this one here. If I were to change this you could see the checkmark moves there because the IF statement for there is now true and it is false for all the rest. So you can use the value here as a way to highlight one of the products like that. 
Another way that people like to use images is to actually have one that changes on the sheet depending upon say what the value of the cell is, like this. Like actually have this apple show up here. But if I changed it to this apple then it would show up here instead. You can use a table just like this to accomplish that. I'm going to select the table and duplicate it and take this over here. I'm going to call it Image Display. Then I've got the product names and I've got the images. I don't need the formulas in there at all now and this is not going to be quantity. Instead this will be selected like that. These will be True and False values. So I've set this one to True and then the rest of these I can set to False. I could Filter. Do a quick Filter here and say just show me the True ones. Now you can see it just comes to this and now I can hide this row and these two columns and for the table get rid of the title. Now I just have that one image there. But I want that to automatically react to this. So instead of putting True and False manually into all of these I'm going to create a formula. I'm just going to do a quick comparison. I'm going to this equals this and make sure I set the references here to Absolute. So they don't change as I paste it in all the other cells. So if I Copy and Paste throughout here you can see it's True and then False for the rest of these. If I were to change this to something else you can see how the True shifts there. So now I can do that same thing I did before. I can do a quick Filter and say only Trues. I can then hide the columns here. I can hide the Header Row and I can get rid of the title. Now this will reflect whatever I put here. Like that. So it reacts in a similar way this checkmark does by referencing this cell. Now this image will simply change to reflect whatever is here. I could have taken that entire table. Gotten rid of the border first and made the cells larger as well before actually doing all this so that it's the right size for my sheet. 
Now I've seen people take this here and maybe have several copies of this table and have maybe a sheet that has like 4 rows or 6 rows or something like that, some very limited number, and have that many copies of this and then overlay them perfectly on top of another cell and then have it react to what is there rather than what is here. Of course it takes a lot of work to do that and if you need to make any changes you have to go in and unfilter and unhide all the columns and rows, change an image and then repeat the entire thing over again and link everything together. So it can get really complex.
It's my hope that at some point in the future Apple will actually give us better functionality that allows us to use images as actual values in cells. Then we can do much more. I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.
Using Images in Mac Numbers Spreadsheets

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