When you’re working with a spreadsheet, it’s often useful to preserve screenshots for future use. Similarly, it’s helpful to add screenshots from other apps or websites to your spreadsheets. Fortunately, Excel has a robust suite of screenshot features to help you do both of those. Let’s learn how to take a screenshot in Microsoft Excel.
How to Take a Screenshot in Excel
Whether you need to screenshot Excel’s own interface, or a third-party site or app, you’re covered right inside Excel. To begin capturing screenshots, you’ll first need to go to the Insert tab. You’ll find that on Excel’s ribbon on the upper part of your screen.
Just left of center, find the Take a Screenshot dropdown menu and click on it.
You’ll see two options immediately available. The first is a thumbnail showing a real-time look at your spreadsheet. This is great if you need to capture your full screen and keep it inside your spreadsheet. To do that, simply click on the thumbnail.
Excel will capture an image screenshot of your spreadsheet, including the menu bars and Excel interface. It behaves just like any photo in Excel – you can move it around, resize it, and add effects to it as needed.
Your second choice lies at the bottom of the screenshot menu. This is the Screen Clipping feature, which lets you capture portions of your desktop, for example. To use it, ensure that the screen area you want to capture is the first window that you have open.
Screenshots offer multiple advantages. They let you save current designs and preserve them for later, once changes are made. They also help you share spreadsheet content with others, while preventing unwanted edits that often occur when you send a full file.
As you can see, it’s easy to take screenshots in Microsoft Excel. The versatile built-in options are quick to work with and help you capture archival images in mere moments.