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.