How to Save Excel Chart as Image (Save Chart as JPG, PNG)

Excel Workbook is a collection of chart sheets and worksheets. Excel has various built-in chart types that you can use to visualize your data.

Creating charts in Excel is so easy. Selecting your data and using a shortcut key(F11 or ALT+F1) or clicking an appropriate chart icon.

Often we might need to insert charts in the presentation slide or in Word documents. You can easily export Excel files into another format but Excel doesn’t let us easily export chart graphs only.

In this article, I’ll show you which methods I use to save and export Excel charts as images. Here you’ll learn 4 easy ways of saving an Excel chart as a high-resolution image.

Copy a Chart to MS Paint and Save as Picture:

Using the copy-paste method, you can easily save a chart as a picture in a few steps.

To illustrate this method, I created a nice 2-D Column chart in Excel 2007 that visually represents the demographics of financial data and now I want to convert this Excel chart to image.

Now follow the steps:

Step 1: Right-click somewhere on the chart area or the chart border and then click on Copy. Don’t place the cursor on the plot area or Legend; this only selects the individual data or series rather than the whole chart and you won’t see the copy option on right-click.

Step 2: Open MS Paint and paste the chart there. You can paste it by pressing CTRL+V on the keyboard or clicking on the paste icon on the Home tab. See the snapshot below to know how my chart looks on MS Paint screen.

Step 3: In the above picture as you see there is an extra white space, just select and crop it so you only have the chart. Using the Rectangular selection option helps you to choose the precise chart area only. You can access the Rectangular selection option clicking the Select command on Home tab.

Step 4: Now after removing the white space, save your chart as an image file. Go to File tab then clicking on the “Save as” button opens an option for choosing the different image format. You can save the chart as an image in different formats like JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP and so forth.

After saving the chart as a picture through MS Paint, you can now insert this picture in Word document and Presentation slides.

Copy and Paste Excel Chart Directly to MS Word or PowerPoint:

You can directly copy and paste the Excel chart into Word document or PowerPoint slide.

Follow the steps that we have discussed in previous method to copy and paste the chart in Word or PowerPoint.

But there is one difference.

When you paste an Excel chart in a document or slide, it behaves as a MS Office Graph Object and also updates when you make any changes in the source file.

This method works best if you don’t need to save an Excel chart as an image locally on your computer. This is beneficial too if you frequently make changes on your data in an Excel sheet because the changes reflect on Word documents or PowerPoint slides.

But if you want to paste this chart as an image then you should use the Paste Special command of Microsoft Office Word or PowerPoint. Paste Special command lets you paste a chart as a picture in JPEG, PNG, EMF, and GIF format.

So, carefully follow the steps that I have explained below:

Step 1: Select the chart and then right-click to copy the chart. It is just the same as you do in the previous method.

Step 2: Open MS Word document or PowerPoint slides and then locate the cursor on the place where you want to paste the chart as a picture.

Step 3: In the Home tab, click on the Paste icon that is available inside the Clipboard group. Within the paste options, click on the “Paste Special” command.

Step 4: Clicking on the Paste Special command opens a Paste Special dialog box where you will find different picture file formats such as JPEG, PNG, GIF, and EMF. On the Paste Special dialog box, choose a format that you want to paste your chart as a picture.

Now when you paste the chart as a picture, the border won’t appear and Picture Tools becomes available when you place an arrow pointer anywhere in the picture.

Save all Charts in a Workbook as Images:

One Go is a better way to convert an Excel Workbook into an HTML file where all your charts will be saved as a PNG format picture.

Below are the steps you should follow to save your Workbook as an HTML file and all the charts as PNG images:

Step 1: Click File tab or Office button and then click the Save As command. Or you can press the shortcut key F12 to open the Save As dialog box.

Step 2: In the Save As dialog box, click on the “Save As Type” box to choose the Web Page (*.htm;*.html) format. Make sure the Entire Workbook radio button is selected.

This will save your html file including all the pictures in the specified folder. Sometimes the charts can be saved as GIF images due to the compatibility issue.

Save Excel Chart as Image using VBA:

Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is a programming language that is most commonly known in terms of creating Macro in Microsoft Office programs such as Word or Excel. Using VBA you can create a macro that automatically saves all the Excel charts as images in a specified folder.

How to use VBA Macro to save Charts as Images?

Creating a new Macro in Excel is done using the Developer tab. But you might not see the developer tab in Excel ribbon if you are creating VBA Macro for the first time. You can enable it inside Excel options dialog box (in Excel 2007) or customize the Quick Access Toolbar (in Excel 2010, 2013).

Now follow the steps mentioned below to create a new VBA Macro using developer tab:

Note: Before writing any code, first create a new folder in your computer where you want to save your pictures. Here I have created a new folder “excelCharts” inside E drive. You have to remember the drive and folder name because it is used inside the VBA code.

Step 1: Go to developer tab and inside the code group click on the Macros icon.

Step 2: In the second step, give a unique name to your new macro; example: SaveChartAsImage. Then choose “This Workbook” from the “Macros In:” dropdown box to run your macro in your current Workbook only.

Step 3: When you click the Create button, a new VBA Editor window will open. Now add the following code to save only the active chart rather than all the charts available in an Excel Workbook. Insert the code below in between Sub and End Sub.

ActiveChart.Export "E:\excelCharts\ActiveChart.png"

The above VBA code will save your currently active chart in the “excelCharts” folder of E drive with the name ActiveChart in the PNG format. You are allowed to change the drive name, folder name, file name and also the picture format. In case you want to save the active chart as a picture in JPG format then just put .jpg by replacing .png in the above code.

VBA code to create a new macro to save chart as image

If you want to save all the available charts inside a Workbook using VBA macro then use the following lines of code:

Sub SaveChartsasImages()
Dim i As Integer
Dim CurrentActiveSheet As Worksheet

Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Application.EnableEvents = False

Set CurrentActiveSheet = ActiveSheet

For Each Sht In Worksheets
    For Each cht In ActiveSheet.ChartObjects
        cht.Activate
        i = i + 1
        ActiveChart.Export "C:\Users\sumit\Desktop\Example\" & Sht.Name & "_chart" & i & ".png"
    Next cht
Next Sht

CurrentActiveSheet.Activate

Application.ScreenUpdating = True
Application.EnableEvents = True

End Sub

The above VBA code is lengthy but it automates the chart saving process by going through each sheet of a Workbook. Lastly it saves all the charts in a specified folder.

Step 4: Now close the VBA Editor window and click the Save As command on the Office button or File tab. While saving your workbook, choose the Excel Macro-Enabled Workbook (*.xlsm) format.

Step 5: In this step, we will run our newly created VBA Macro. But you should first select the chart to save as an image if your code is written to save only the current chart.

After selecting a chart, go to Developer tab, and then again click on the Macros icon. There you will see the name of the new macro that you have created in the previous step. Choose a macro and then clicking on the Run button will automatically save your selected chart as an image in the specified folder.

If you open the folder that you have specified in VBA code, you will see a new image of .PNG format. Your picture format will be JPG or GIF if you have changed the VBA code.

Conclusion:

That’s all ! I am sure you have tried saving the charts as images using all the 4 ways that I have mentioned in this article.

Which method do you like most? Please tell me in the comment box.