How to link a photo in spreadsheets?

[fas123ner]

How can I link a photo to a cell in Open Office spreadsheets. I have an inventory list of products that I would love to attach photos to. I need to display the photo as a file instead of the actual photo. Help!!!

Title Edited. A descriptive title for posts helps others who are searching for solutions and increases the chances of a reply (Hagar, Moderator).

[Hagar Delest]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

Create a hyperlink pointing to the pic on your HD.

Edit:  I need to display the photo as a file instead of the actual photo. Help!!! My understanding is that it's fine to have just a link and not the display of the pic.

Please add '[Solved]' at beginning of your first post title (edit button) if your issue has been fixed.

[acknak]

I would love to hear from anyone who has tried to use images linked to the data in a spreadsheet and found it usable/useful. If so, how did you do it?

In my experience, it has always proved to be a waste of time because the images are not part of any cell. You can anchor an image to a cell, but the anchoring is purely cosmetic, and the position and size of the image "drift" as the sheet is used. Sorting or moving any of the rows and columns will completely disassociate an image from it's anchor cell.

[Villeroy]

Re: Best Approach for Images - Store or Link?
Spreadsheets are calculators.
Databases are data stores.

[RoryOF]

It is possible that the spreadsheet is being (mis)used as a table generator. If so, better to use Writer's table structures to achieve the same end. This would allow an icon sized view of the picture and a link to the full illustration.

[acknak]

Oops. I just noticed (from Hagar's edited comment) that the question is how to make a hyperlink to the image file, not how to display images in a spreadsheet.

If that's all you want--a clickable link to the image file(s)--then there's no problem. You can create such a link by...

Insert > Hyperlink

• Type: Document (icons at left)
  Path: (browse to the image file)
  Text: "Image" (or whatever; empty will show the image file path)
  Click "Apply["/list]
  
  If you click on the link, OOo will hand off to whatever application is configured to handle that type of image file.
  
  If you have a lot of images and you want to avoid the hyperlink dialog, you can paste the image file names into a column and create the links by a formula: =HYPERLINK("file://" & "path/to/your/images/" & ___; "LINK TEXT")
  
  You should replace "___" with the cell address where the file name is stored.
  
  Sorry for getting off-track from your question.
  
  Whether you use the dialog or a formula, the link is textual data, which Calc can handle just fine, unlike an actual image in the sheet.