Moving Comment Background Pictures to Cells

Francois has a bunch of comments in a worksheet, and each comment contains a picture as a background. He would like to remove those background pictures from the comments and place them, instead, as graphics in the cells just to the right of where the comments are located.

The only way to do this is with the aid of a macro. The reason is that you cannot manually select and copy any graphic that has been stored in the background of a comment. You can, in a macro, approximate "grabbing" the image:

Sub CommentPictures()
    Dim cmt As Comment
    Dim rCell As Range
    Dim bVisible As Boolean

    For Each cmt In ActiveSheet.Comments
        With cmt
            bVisible = .Visible
            .Visible = True
            Set rCell = .Parent.Offset(0, 1)
            .Shape.CopyPicture _
              Appearance:=xlScreen, Format:=xlPicture
            rCell.PasteSpecial
            Selection.ShapeRange.LockAspectRatio = msoFalse
            Selection.Width = rCell.Width
            Selection.Height = rCell.Height
            .Visible = bVisible
            .Shape.Fill.OneColorGradient msoGradientFromCenter, 1, 1
        End With
    Next cmt
End Sub

The macro steps through each comment in the active worksheet. The entire comment (including the background) is copied as a graphic to the Clipboard, then it is pasted into the desired cell. The background of the comment is then set to a different fill instead of the graphic.

You should note that this approach provides only an approximation of grabbing the background picture. It also, in copying the entire comment as a graphic, copies any text that is contained in the comment.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (11164) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Moving Comment Background Pictures to Cells.