How to Insert Data From a Picture in Excel

For Windows users.

Want to digitise that document, receipt, or book page?

Data from Picture is an Excel feature that allows you to extract the text from an image and insert it into a worksheet. This can be a real timesaver and prevents the need to carry out data entry work manually.

It’s already possible to do this in Excel for Mac — as well as the iPhone and Android apps. However, for Windows users, it’s currently only available (as of 25th July 2022) to Office Insiders running Beta Channel Version 2207 (Build 15402.20002) or later.

For more information about the Office Insider Program, visit my article: ‘How to Join the Office Insider Program’.

Let’s take a look at how to use this new feature.

Steps

1

Prepare an image. You can capture a photo of some printed material, copy one from the web, or take a screenshot.

Just make sure it’s clear and cropped so only the data you want to extract is visible.

The following languages (and their character sets) are currently supported: English, Bosnian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak…