Excel — Import data from an Image
Do you ever have a receipt, report, or other image file that you want to analyze in Excel? Have you spent time manually transcribing your data? No more — you’ve got better options.
OPTION 1
Go ahead and open a blank excel file and go to the Data TAB.
Select From Picture > Picture from File (make sure your image is saved to your computer).
Navigate to your Image — in this example we are using a receipt.
After you select the image, Excel will open the Data from Picture Window. Here you will review what data to bring in and how it will be formatted.
Click Review and scroll through all data questions — either making corrections or clicking accept.
For example, in the image below you would remove the “x” to leave the number “5.84” and then click Accept button or one of the arrows to move to the next item for review.
When you are ready to bring data into Excel — click the Insert Data button.
We’ve only reviewed and corrected the first 6 lines — leaving the rest if the data in its default form. As you can see this method for this receipt will require review of each line to accurately bring the data into Excel. The default line items suggested by Excel have characters you don’t want in the amount column.
OPTION 2
An alternative way to import an image (and one with more control) is to use the Snipping tool and Clipboard. Using the same receipt image file — here’s how you do it.
Open your image file.
Open the Snipping tool and select only the data you want. In this example we’ve captured only the transactions leaving off the top and bottom as well as the last column with the “x”.
Open Excel and go to Data Tab.
Select From Picture > Picture from Clipboard.
This will open the Data from Picture window. Use the same instructions as above to review and insert data.
This is quicker because most of the default suggestions are correct. Check it out yourself and see how easy it is to bring in data using the Snipping tool.
