Creating valuable, easily digestible overviews of complex insights is by no means easy, especially when you may be unfamiliar with the information you need to use to do so. Alternatively, it can be even more difficult to try to understand some of the insights being provided to you when you don’t have proper context on what data was used to compile these results.

While you may not have heard of this tool before, there is something which has been hidden away in the recesses of Excel which will revolutionize the way you have been building dashboards.

It is called the Camera tool, and it can only be found through a customization of your toolbar! Thankfully that is neither difficult, nor time consuming.

Here is how you can access the camera tool, and then we will focus on its use cases.

Step 1: Finding the customize ribbon menu

• Start by going into the File menu, or the big Excel start button if you are running an older version of the program

• Open the Options menu and navigate to the Customize Ribbon tab

Step 2: Create a custom ribbon tab and group

• Navigate to the Choose commands from drop-down and select All Commands, then scroll until you locate the command that says Camera

• In the Customize the Ribbon section create a New Tab, and name it however you like. It should automatically create a group within the tab but if it does not, or if you already have an existing custom tab, you can add a New Group using the appropriately named button

Step 3: Add the Camera tool

• You can add the Camera tool to a custom ribbon tab in one of two ways

  • Either by having the Camera tool in the left side menu and the custom group in the right side menu selected and pressing the Add >>

  • Or by dragging the Camera tool icon into the custom group

• Once you see the tool appearing under the custom tab, you can click the OK button and you will then see the Camera tool in your new tab!

While these steps outline how to add the Camera tool to a toolbar, it is also possible to add it to the Quick Access Toolbar.

Now onto using the Camera tool!

The way that the camera tool works is by creating essentially a real-time view of a selection of cells anywhere in your workbook. Nicely, it does so using the same tooling as an image box, meaning that it can even be used with formulas to provide even more customizable results (Read the article: Drop Down Reporting - Mastering the Camera Tool for more on that).

What this allows you to do is show a non-editable version of a table, chart, graph, or other result without running the risk of users accidentally modifying data, or deleting any of the work that went into it. 

Conversely, it also acts as a type of portal to where the original data is stored. I find this to be a useful aspect when presenting findings as whenever someone has a question regarding the process used to generate one of your outputs, you can simply double-click on the window, and it will bring you to the sheet with the rest of your work.

Here are three simple tips to effectively using the Camera tool

Tip 1: Choosing your range

• Whatever range you select will be mimicked by the Camera tool, including any modifications made to them once the window has been created, this includes increasing or decreasing the heights and widths of the selected cells.

• This also includes any charts, tables, or other objects which exist in the range

Tip 2: Blending the snapshots

• Because the Camera tool picks up even the cell and line formatting of the range for the image it produces, you can give those cells a white background and remove the gridlines from that portion of the sheet, and pairing that with turning the dashboard all white as well means that you will have a much more seamless design for your work.

Tip 3: Organize your data

• Since the Camera tool can lead people back to the source of the screenshot, it is favourable to have the charts, tables, and graphs that you generate in the same sheet as the source data. You can combine this with the outline tools to make a very clean experience to give those users who want to dig beyond the top level.