BLOGS BY TOPIC▼
BLOGS BY AUTHOR▼
BLOGS BY YEAR▼
This blog shows options for creating a webcam focused on one particular area of an Excel workbook! You can do this either by pasting the Excel range into PowerPoint or Word as a linked picture, or by using the Excel camera tool.
- The Excel Camera tool, and pasting to Word and PowerPoint (this blog)
- Copying/pasting live images within Excel (the camera tool)
- Creating a live link to Excel from Word or PowerPoint
Posted by Andy Brown on 25 April 2018
You need a minimum screen resolution of about 700 pixels width to see our blogs. This is because they contain diagrams and tables which would not be viewable easily on a mobile phone or small laptop. Please use a larger tablet, notebook or desktop computer, or change your screen resolution settings.
The Excel Camera tool, and pasting to Word and PowerPoint
Suppose that you've created a number of worksheets in a workbook:
![]() |
![]() |
One worksheet contains a table ... | ...and another contains a chart |
You now want to present them side by side in a dashboard:

You want to show the table and the chart alongside each other.
Crucially, however, when you update any of the source worksheets in any way, the dashboard should automatically reflect these changes (think of it as less like a photograph, and more like a webcam).
This blog shows you how to do this, and also how to paste live data into PowerPoint and Word:

When you double-click on this PowerPoint image, it will take you to the underlying Excel workbook.
If you want to try some of the things shown in this blog, you can download the file used. Let's start with copying live images within Excel.
- The Excel Camera tool, and pasting to Word and PowerPoint (this blog)
- Copying/pasting live images within Excel (the camera tool)
- Creating a live link to Excel from Word or PowerPoint
You might be interested in my freely available DynamicImage macro to copy a range of cells and paste as a "dashboard" in any sheet of any workbook. It is similar to the Camera Tool. See My Excel Toolbox.