How to Insert a Picture in Excel Comment

Watch Video – Insert Picture in Excel Comment

In some cases, you may want to insert an image in the comments boxes in Excel.

For example, if you have a list of products, then inserting product images in the comment box could make your Excel sheet easy to use.

As soon as the user would hover the mouse over a cell that has a comment, it would show the comment and the picture within it.

I used this trick when I had a list of countries and I wanted to insert a flag image for each country in the cell comment.

Something as shown below:

How to Insert a Picture in Excel Comment

It’s such a simple trick; yet impresses big time!!

Insert a Picture in Excel Comment

Here are the steps to insert a picture in Excel Comment:

  • In the worksheet, select the cell in which you want to insert the comment.
  • Right-click on the cell and select Insert Comment. This will insert a comment in the cell.
    • You can also use the keyboard shortcut – Shift + F2.How to Insert a Picture in Excel Comment - Rightclick
  • (Optional Step) Delete the default username from the comment. If you don’t delete the existing text in the comment, it will display the text over the picture.
  • Hover the cursor on the edges of the comment. You would notice that the cursor turns into a four arrow icon. Right-click and click on the ‘Format Comment…’ option.
    • This will open the Format Comment dialogue box.How to Insert a Picture in Excel Comment - format comment
  • In the format comment dialogue box, select the ‘Color and Lines’ tab.How to Insert a Picture in Excel Comment - color lines
  • In the Color Drop-down menu select ‘Fill Effects’.How to Insert a Picture in Excel Comment - Fill
  • In the ‘Fill Effects’ dialogue box, select the ‘Picture’ tab and click on the ‘Select Picture’ button below the Picture box.How to Insert a Picture in Excel Comment - select Picture
  • Browse and select the picture you want in the comment.
  • Click OK.

Now when you hover over the cell, the picture would be displayed in your comment.

Amazing, isn’t it!!!

Note: This technique involves a bit of manual work. You need to follow the above steps for each cell where you want to insert a picture in the comment.

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Sumit Bansal
Hello there! I'm Sumit Bansal, founder of trumpexcel.com and an Excel MVP. I started this website in 2013 with a simple goal: to share my love for Excel through easy to follow tips, tutorials and videos. I'm here to help you get the best out of MS Excel to save time and boost your productivity.

12 thoughts on “How to Insert a Picture in Excel Comment”

  1. Thanks for the tutorial. I used this method for the past four days and went to add another picture to a comment today and now I get the error,
    “Bad Request – Request Too Long – HTTP Error 400. The size of the request headers is too long.”

    This happens at the Choose Picture step. Before, I had the option of choosing the pic from a file on my PC or the Internet. All I get is the error now.
    I’m using Office 2019. There are no VBA macros. I tried both repair functions. No one seems to have an answer. Can you help? Thanks…

    Reply
  2. This doesn’t tell you what to do if your picture needs to be rotated after you insert it within the Note/Comment.

    Reply
  3. With the advent of the new “comments”, this doesn’t appear to work. However, found that the old “comments” are now called “Notes”, and this works perfectly!!! Thank you!!!!

    Reply
  4. This feature seems to have been discontinued. Sadly, it is not available in Office 365 (version 16.0.11425). I opened an old workbook that had images in the comments, but was not able to insert new ones. The menu options are simply not there. I also tried pasting into the comments, and it would resize the comment box to the size of the image, but the image would not display.

    Reply
  5. What version of Excel are you using for this? I’m using Excel 15.30 for Mac and it doesn’t show me these options.

    Reply

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