Google Sheets has evolved immensely over time. However, some basic features still require some improvement or further implementation care of Google Labs or something. One such feature is cropping images using the app.
You can insert images into Google Sheets, but cropping can be challenging when done via the app. The tutorial is here to teach you how to get cropping done without editing the image itself.
How to Crop Image in Google Sheets
There are many reasons to crop an image, including having an image that’s too big for the spreadsheet to view in one window or you only want to use a portion of an image. Regardless, here’s the nitty-gritty when it comes to doing in-app image cropping.
Step 1: Click this link to make a copy and open a new spreadsheet on Google Sheets. A blank document will do for the purposes of this tutorial.
Step 2: Insert the picture into the spreadsheet. Click the “Insert” menu then select “Drawing” instead of “Image” like usual.
Unfortunately, this means the image you’re inserting can only be placed a layer above the spreadsheet instead of becoming a cell-inserted or cell-embedded image.
Step 3: You’ve now opened the “Drawing” window. Here you can do cropping that you normally couldn’t do with regular image insertions.
Step 4: Insert an image on the “Drawing” window for cropping. Do this by clicking the “Image” button or icon.
From there, you’ll get multiple options for choosing an image, like if you instead chose “Insert” menu then “Image” to get your image.
You can copy and paste an image from the web or your image editor (like MS Paint), use the Print Screen button to get a screenshot of your desktop and paste that there, or open an image you’ve saved on your PC. It’s also possible to insert the URL of the web image if you have that on hand.
Step 5: We’ve chosen the image upload option to get an image. Here, we’re using a One Piece fan art celebrating its 25 years of publication taken from Twitter made by user @ke02152.
This image definitely requires cropping because it’s 771 x 4096 pixels. Pretty hefty and you can’t display it all at once decently on most mobile phone or laptop screens.
Step 6: Wait for the image to upload prior to cropping.
Now that it has been uploaded, you can resize it then crop it out.
Here we’ve resized the picture so it’d be easier to crop out.
And here, finally, we’ve cropped it by choosing the “Crop” button or icon. The “Crop” function isn’t present in images you’ve uploaded by the “Insert” menu, by the way.
To crop the image, just click and drag the corner edges until you come across the parts of the image you want visible. It’s quite the intuitive method of cropping. Once you’re done, just click “Save and Close” to finish up.
Step 7: Here’s the finished product. The picture has been cropped out for you without you having to fire up your MS Paint or Adobe Photoshop to do the cropping beforehand.
By the way, you also have the option to open your image on Google Docs or Google Slide and then do the cropping from there before copying and pasting it on Google Sheets. However, the “Drawing” crop method is our preferred method because it mostly only need Google Sheets for it.
In Summation
Indeed, you don’t need a fancy image editing app—or Microsoft Paint—in order to do some cropping with Google Sheets. You can use the “Drawing” option to do the cropping for you.
Images added to Google Docs and Slides can be cropped, masked, or have borders added to them. You need the “Drawing” crop workaround in order to at least crop images through the Google Sheets spreadsheet platform though because images have fewer functionalities when pasted on GS.
References:
- “Add and edit images“, Google.com Support, Retrieved July 25, 2022
- “Crop and adjust images“, Google.com Support, Retrieved July 25, 2022
- “How To Crop An Image In Google Sheets“, SheetsforMarketers.com, Retrieved July 25, 2022
- PDFEditing, “How to Crop or Cutting Image to Sheets in Google Spreadsheet“, YouTube, June 11, 2020
Google Sheet: Make a copy