I am not sure what this is called by quite a while ago I saw either an Excel spreadsheet or a Word document that had other documents "embedded" in the front page in a way is similar to the "comments" that can be added to a cell and then you can hover or click on that cell to read what was written. These were actual documents that could be viewed in full when you clicked on the part of the document that they were linked to.
I don't know what it was called but I would love to know if it is possible to do something like that and I can't find any information on the web about how to do it, or even if it can be done. But that might largely be because I have no idea what to call it so I am searching in very vague terms.
As a simple example I would like to have a front page which would have a staff member's information typed on it e.g.
Name : John Smith
Passport number : 012365236
Home address : 125 Nowhere
And then if you click on the part of the spreadsheet that gives the Passport number you are either taken to a portion of the spreadsheet where there is a scanned copy of the passport, or it links you to another part of the document that has the passport scan.
And then the name portion could perhaps have a staff photo of the person etc
I would need to have one document for each person and it would have to be easy to add to or change the "embedded" documents / pictures. I can't just have different pages of a spreadsheet because I need the front page to take you to the document that relates to that part of the form the way that the comment does. And if possible I would need to be able to click on that "embedded" info so that I could print the photo or passport doc if I need to.
Does anyone know what this is called - or even if it exists?? And if not, can someone please invent it for me 🙂
Many thanks, Terri
Hi Terri,
This sounds to me like interactive tooltips, partly anyway.
I am pretty sure you can build this with VBA, but you can of course build something similar without VBA.
A simple approach for such scenario you give is to have one sheet with an Excel table where you have all the data, including pictures, stored.
In another sheet, which would be the front page, you just layout how you want the data to be presented. From a drop-down list you would then choose the name of the person you want to see information about.
A more advance approach would of course include a database where you store the data and then you are just querying the database using same front page scenario as described above.
Br,
Anders
Hi Terri
An interesting and challenging question.
It is not practical to insert too many pictures into the file as the file size will become too large.
Furthermore the inserted pictures are not easy to handle and referred to.
A more practical approach is to have a database of names and links to where the pictures are stored in your computer.
You can then query the names and have the picture displayed when you want it.
I have also created a picture-link of the photo to another sheet where you can adjust it's size and print.
The instructions are included in the attachment (it uses VBA). Make sure you create the database with the links first.
This is a scaled down version of a project that I am currently doing.
Good luck.
Sunny
Thank you so much Andres and Sunny for your replies.
Both of them are very detailed and quite a lot above my very basic Excel knowledge, but I will go through them a bit later this afternoon carefully and with my friend Google who I am sure will be able to tell me what VBA is 🙂
Thank you for taking the time to help me and for the example - I will play with it and hopefully I can get it to do what I want. Unfortunately the information that I need to link to the front page is very sensitive and therefore I wanted to only have it in the spreadsheet which I could therefore password protect and not in a database anywhere on our server.
But thanks to both of you I have a starting point now and I have learnt that it's called a link and not an embedded document (how stupid am I - slaps hand to head!!)
I really appreciate it!
Terri
Hi Terri
From what you described, looks like you will need to look at what Anders suggested.
Just note that it will increase your file size tremendously if the are many images.
Good luck.
Sunny
