Working with Shapes and Images in Excel: A Practical Guide
How to insert, manage, and troubleshoot shapes and images in Excel spreadsheets.
Shapes and images seem like simple Excel features until you have dozens of them. Then you discover they move unexpectedly, disappear when you filter, or make your file size balloon.
Here's what you need to know to work with these objects effectively.
Inserting Shapes and Images
Shapes: Insert tab → Shapes. Choose from rectangles, circles, arrows, flowchart symbols, and more. Click and drag on the sheet to create.
Images: Insert tab → Pictures → This Device (for local files) or Stock Images or Online Pictures. The image is embedded in the workbook.
Screenshots: Insert tab → Screenshot. Capture another window or a screen region directly into Excel.
Icons: Insert tab → Icons. Vector graphics that scale cleanly and can be recolored to match your document.
Size and Position Properties
Right-click any shape or image → Size and Properties. This opens a pane with critical settings:
Move and size with cells: The object stays anchored to specific cells. When rows or columns resize, the object resizes too.
Move but don't size with cells: The object moves when rows/columns above or left of it change, but maintains its own size.
Don't move or size with cells: The object stays at an absolute position on the sheet regardless of cell changes.
Choose based on your needs. Dashboard decorations often work best with “Don't move or size.” Data-related images might need to move with their associated cells.
The Selection Pane
Home tab → Find & Select → Selection Pane (or Alt+F10) opens a panel showing all objects on the current sheet.
From here you can:
- Click to select objects (useful when they're layered or hard to click)
- Rename objects (click the name and type)
- Hide/show objects (click the eye icon)
- Reorder layers (drag objects up or down)
The Selection Pane is essential for complex sheets with many overlapping objects.
Common Problems and Fixes
Images disappear when filtering: If an image is set to “Move and size with cells” and the rows it's anchored to get hidden by a filter, the image hides too. Fix: Change to “Don't move or size with cells.”
Shapes move unexpectedly: Usually caused by “Move with cells” when you didn't intend it. Check the Size and Properties settings.
File size bloating: Large images embedded in Excel increase file size significantly. Compress images: Select image → Picture Format tab → Compress Pictures. Choose appropriate resolution for your use.
Can't select an object: It might be behind another object or set to “Don't print” which sometimes affects visibility. Use Selection Pane to select it directly.
Finding Objects Across Sheets
Go To Special (Ctrl+G → Special → Objects) selects all objects on the current sheet. But there's no built-in way to see objects across all sheets at once.
For workbooks with shapes and images scattered across many sheets, you'd have to check each sheet individually. In a 30-sheet workbook, that's tedious.
Find Everything in Your Workbook with Object Explorer
Named ranges, charts, comments, hidden sheets — Object Explorer shows you everything in your workbook at a glance.
Related Reading
- Chart Management — manage charts in workbooks
- Workbook Audit — audit complex workbooks
- Comments & Notes — find all comments
Official Resources
- Add shapes — Microsoft shapes guide
- Insert pictures — adding images to Excel
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