Excel like Camera Tool

[phiga]

Hello,
I'm looking for the way to have the same function than Excel called Camera. It create a "live snapshot"of a range of cells to paste anywhere else in the speadsheet. the great advantage is to have tables on the same page with different column width. Tables are not linked by the colums
Excel>tools>camera.
This is an often hidden function that can be attached to the tool bar by "customize". This is a very useful function.

I can't find a similar function in Calc.
Does someone know it?

[acknak]

I don't think there's a packaged function, but it's not hard to do:

1) Select the cells you want
2) Copy to clipboard
3) Click on a destination cell
4) Edit > Paste Special; choose "Link"

This seems to paste references to each cell in the area that was copied, which gives you a live copy of the cells.

[phiga]

Thanks for help.
With this solution the copied cells are "slave" of the column width of the data above.

[acknak]

No--not for me anyway--they simply copy the values from the other cells. The cell formatting and column widths are completely independent, unless they share the columns with other values.

In Excel, is the "snapshot" a separate set of cells, like an embedded independent sheet, or is it part of the main cell grid?

[phiga]

they are separate provide I use different columns.. this is all the benefit of this functions
See below.
I have enable the border in the the frame at the bottom to see that columns are different than above as I may modify then if required.
The "photo" with my payment terms is not modified and always remain the same format. The real cell range is located away in the right side
Wel I hope you can see the photo below

[Bill]

In Excel, is the "snapshot" a separate set of cells, like an embedded independent sheet, or is it part of the main cell grid?

The "snapshot" is a linked picture. The picture can be moved or resized like any other image, but when the original cells are changed, the cells shown in the linked picture also change.

[acknak]

Thanks, but now I'm even more confused. If it's an image, then how do you change the column widths? I thought that was the main goal?

Oh wait, you don't want to change the column widths, you just want the snapshot to be independent of the row/column grid at the destination.

Hmm. That's a nice feature. I don't see any way to do that in Calc.

In theory, you could insert an OLE object to do it (that's what the object is--a snapshot), but OOo seems to be unable to deal with this specific requirement. E.g. you can insert a fragment of a Writer doc as an object in a spreadsheet, but you can't insert a fragment of a spreadsheet in itself.

[phiga]

yes this is a serious limitation for me.
Also I use a excel addin that spell out a amount of money into text with the currency as you can see in my screen shot.

[Dave]

yes this is a serious limitation for me.
Also I use a excel addin that spell out a amount of money into text with the currency as you can see in my screen shot.

Then it is a balance of available options and need. Money is a serious limitation for me.

I have seen this sort of thing done a long time back in a word processor, WordPerfect, to be exact, with adroit use of columns and tables [WordPerfect allows simple application of different column sets on the same page], but it was not straightforward to accomplish. Nice if it can be done in one shot, of course. So, if I could afford Excel, I'd use it. If not, then one must work at it. More expensive cars have more options. If in business, I'd use whatever makes it possible and simple [like getting someone else to do it], then look around for a good accountant.

David.

[rogerl123]

Hi

I was also wondering if there is a function similar to the Paste Picture Link from Excel 2007 (this used to be the camera snapshot and paste linked picture functionality in earlier versions).

The purpose of this is to create a graphic that is linked back to the original data in cells so that entering data. The graphic may then be added to a chart, or other graphic for presentation. when the user changes the base data, the data on the graphic also changes (you can also link the graphic to a cell containing a formula. so that the result displayed is dependent on the formula).

Does anyone know how this could be achieved in Calc? I can think of another way of achieving the presentation effect by pasting links from cells on a spreadsheet and then placing a graphic on the layer behind the cells, but every time you move the graphic, then the cells also have to be moved, so the benefits are lost.

Another reason for doing this is that you may want to place the graphic on a custom dialogue box.

[aliby]

This is a feature that makes custom forms and manipulating inter-dependent sheets user friendly as you can monitor changes on sheets as you adjust values in a form. Any developments on this feature?

[acknak]

I'm quite sure there is already an open request for this feature, but you can check for it yourself. Once you find the open report, you can see what the status is--whether any work is being done on it or not: [Tutorial] Reporting bugs or suggestions