Excel 2007 Images Embedded In Comments = File Too Large

I made a list of all the major electronics (pc towers, laptops, monitors, etc) at my workplace for inventory. To make it better I wanted to add pictures so I could see what each of the items looked like and a relative location (based on the pic). I did this by adding the pictures inside of comments. As I was going along I realized the file was growing substantially; which normally wouldn't be a problem. My problem was that it grew so large (~500MB I think) it had to 'repair' upon opening every time. When it did this it removed my comments (which included images as well) and I was essentially out of luck at this point.

I removed all the images so I could work on the inventory without any issues, but I really want images on there in some fashion. So my question...how can I achieve this and make it functional? Thanks.

Josh B.

Posted 2013-01-09T13:21:04.150

Reputation: 21

2How big are these images when you view the properties in your (Windows?) explorer? – nixda – 2013-01-09T13:27:04.193

Roughly ~2MB/each – Josh B. – 2013-01-09T15:24:18.287

tried to convert them to jpeg, if they are not on that format already? that would slice a big chunk out of the size. – Lorenzo Von Matterhorn – 2013-01-09T18:39:48.057

Yes they are jpegs taken from my phone of the equipment around the office. – Josh B. – 2013-01-09T20:47:20.997

Do the images have to be inline? Can't you simply hyperlink to them instead? – Karan – 2013-01-10T15:13:19.433

I'd rather it be quick - hover over - boom there's a picture. – Josh B. – 2013-01-14T14:22:10.293

Answers

First solution you should try:

Edit all those pictures down to a very small size - you don't need detailed, high resolution images for this do you?

So take them down to a couple of kb each by resizing and saving as lower quality.

Rory Alsop

Posted 2013-01-09T13:21:04.150

Reputation: 3 168

My first thought is 2MB for a picture is too high, so you should compress them down. My favorite program for this is Gimp, but I believe there may be some command line utilities out there which are more suited for doing this in batches.

My second thought is, why Excel? You can store images in an Access database easily enough, and this kind of job feels like something you would use a database for (though I admittedly don't know the scope of the project). Converting this into a large scale database (not necessarily Access) might be your best option going forward.

Moses

Posted 2013-01-09T13:21:04.150

Reputation: 870