Creating a Photo Catalog from a Folder of Photos

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated January 23, 2021)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


Glenn is making a catalog of all his digital photos in Excel. All the photos (about 5000 of them) are in a single folder. He would like to insert the photos to the right of the photo's description, then put a hyperlink to all the photos to enlarge the thumbnail to a larger photo. Right now Glenn is doing this one by one and it is driving him crazy, so he is looking for ways to speed the process up.

The good news is that you don't have to go crazy quite as fast; Excel provides macros that can make the job faster and easier. Before jumping into that discussion, however, you may want to think long and hard before you go about putting all your photos into an Excel workbook.

When you insert a photo into Excel, the file size of your workbook is increased by at least the file size of the photo being inserted. Thus, if your average photo is 1 MB in size (quite small with today's cameras) and you insert 5000 such photos, then you end up with a workbook that has at least 5 GB of photos in it. That is a huge workbook, and Excel might have a hard time working with that much info. (How hard of a time depends on your version of Excel, how much memory is in your system, how fast your processor is, etc.)

You might think that the solution is to scale the images as you place them in your worksheet, so that they are smaller. While rescaling an image makes it appear smaller (it looks smaller in the worksheet), it isn't really smaller. The full-size image is still right there in Excel. So, you don't reduce your workbook's file size at all by scaling the photos.

The way you can reduce the file size is to scale the photos outside of Excel, using photo editing software, before they are inserted into Excel. In other words, you would need to load each of the photos into the photo editing software, resize the photos to whatever thumbnail size you want, and then save the resized photo into a new thumbnail image file. (You generally wouldn't want to save the resized image over the top of your original photo.) You could then insert each thumbnail into your Excel worksheet and your resultant workbook file size would be smaller, although still directly related to the aggregate size of the thumbnail photos you add to the worksheet.

If you still want to insert all the photos into your worksheet, you can do so using a macro. The following example, PhotoCatalog, can look for all the thumbnail photos and insert them into the worksheet, along with a hyperlink to the full photo. It assumes four things: (1) your photos and thumbnails are all JPG images, (2) the photos are in the directory c:\Photos\, (3) the thumbnails are in the directory c:\Photos\Thumbnails\, and (4) the thumbnails have the same file names as the full-size photos.

Sub PhotoCatalog()
    Dim i As Double
    Dim xPhoto As String
    Dim sLocT As String
    Dim sLocP As String
    Dim sPattern As String

    sLocT = "c:\Photos\Thumbnails\"
    sLocP = "c:\Photos\"
    sPattern = sLocT & "*.jpg"

    Application.EnableEvents = False
    Application.ScreenUpdating = False

    Range("A1").Select
    ActiveCell.FormulaR1C1 = "Description"
    Range("B1").Select
    ActiveCell.FormulaR1C1 = "Thumbnail"
    Range("C1").Select
    ActiveCell.FormulaR1C1 = "Hyperlink"
    Range("A1:C1").Select
    With Selection.Font
        .Name = "Arial"
        .FontStyle = "Bold"
        .Size = 12
        .ColorIndex = xlAutomatic
    End With
    With Selection.Borders(xlEdgeBottom)
        .LineStyle = xlContinuous
        .Weight = xlMedium
        .ColorIndex = xlAutomatic
    End With

    i = 1
    On Error GoTo 0
    xPhoto = Dir(sPattern, vbNormal)
    Do While xPhoto <> ""
        i = i + 1
        Range("B" & i).Select
        ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert(sLocT & xPhoto).Select
        With Selection.ShapeRange
            .LockAspectRatio = msoTrue
            .Height = 54#
            .PictureFormat.Brightness = 0.5
            .PictureFormat.Contrast = 0.5
            .PictureFormat.ColorType = msoPictureAutomatic
        End With
        Range("C" & i).Select
        ActiveSheet.Hyperlinks.Add Anchor:=Selection, _
          Address:= sLocP & xPhoto, TextToDisplay:=xPhoto
        xPhoto = Dir
    Loop

    Application.EnableEvents = True
    Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

It can take quite a while for this macro to run, depending on the type of system you are using and how many photos you are cataloging.

Note:

If you would like to know how to use the macros described on this page (or on any other page on the ExcelTips sites), I've prepared a special page that includes helpful information. Click here to open that special page in a new browser tab.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (7484) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Determining Sorting Criteria

If you need to know how a range of data is sorted, the task is not as easy as you might at first think. This tip examines ...

Discover More

Setting Up an Array with Fields

One of the more esoteric ways to display data is with an "array," which is like a miniature inline table. This tip ...

Discover More

Printing Shortcut Key Assignments from a Macro

Need to know what shortcut keys are defined? You can use a single macro command line to print out the definitions.

Discover More

Excel Smarts for Beginners! Featuring the friendly and trusted For Dummies style, this popular guide shows beginners how to get up and running with Excel while also helping more experienced users get comfortable with the newest features. Check out Excel 2013 For Dummies today!

More ExcelTips (menu)

Deleting a Macro

Don't need that old macro any more? Here's how to get rid of it so that it is no longer a part of your workbook.

Discover More

Generating Unique, Sequential Names

Do you need to create a number of words or phrases where you only alter a few letters in each one? If the alterations ...

Discover More

Stepping Through a Non-Contiguous Range of Cells

Using macros to step through each cell in a selection is a common occurrence. What if that selected range is made up of ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 5 + 0?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the menu interface (Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, or Excel 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.