Excel’s New Insert Data From Image Tool Works Quite Well With Dungeons & Dragons
Android: Microsoft is currently testing a fun new feature that allows you to import data into Excel by taking a photo of it – preferably a data table, not, say, your cat. It won’t do anything.
On paper, this is a great feature , especially if you work with numbers all day. I don’t even want to think about the hours I spent in my previous job doing pointless data entry because my colleagues needed crazy analysis of materials that were not in digital format. Insert a long sigh here.
In practice, however, Microsoft’s tool still needs some work. And that’s okay. This is now a beta feature so you can use it. In fact, it is such a beta that you can only try it if you are using the Android version of Microsoft Excel. (IOS support coming in the future.) And even then, you need to be an Office Insider to access this feature.
Here’s a quick guide to using Microsoft’s Photo to Spreadsheet Tool, as well as a quick overview of how we got around it.
How to enable new Excel mode “Insert data from image”
As mentioned, you need to be using the latest version of Excel on Android. After downloading the app, you also need to enroll in the Office Insider Program to access this feature. However, this is very easy to do. Just click on this link and get involved.
Wait a few minutes and then visit Google Play again to see if there is a new app update for Excel (beta features). If you don’t see it, you will have to try again later, but it shouldn’t take long to get this update. (I had it almost immediately after registering with the testing program.) After updating the application, open it and open a blank spreadsheet. After that, look at the bottom of the screen to find a new icon: the camera at the top of the table. Click on this.
You will then need to give Microsoft permission to scan what you shoot, which means your photo will be uploaded somewhere to Microsoft’s server. (If you photograph confidential financial documents, you may not want to do this – more because of your workplace regulations than because of the fear that some Microsoft employee will spy on what your company does.)
Then you will see what your camera’s viewfinder sees, which shouldn’t be too surprising. New to the feed is the large red box, which is (sort of) a working analysis tool. It scans what it sees to determine the boundaries of what Excel should eventually try to import. In other words, if there is no red square around the data you want to capture, you need to adjust the lighting in your room and possibly the angle (or distance) of your camera.
After you take a snapshot, Excel will analyze what it found and let you know if there is any data you might want to look at if you are not sure if it is correct. Spoiler alert: You will see this a lot.
You can make changes in the preview window, although I find it easier to just import everything into your spreadsheet and work from there. (You will probably want to make the biggest changes on a desktop or laptop, as it will likely be much faster than on your smartphone or tablet.)
How good is Excel’s text import tool?
Depends. Obviously, the more complex the spreadsheet you are photographing, the more difficult it will be to digitally translate it. Excel has done a wonderful job with this printed version of the rehearsal schedule for the show I’m in, but I would probably spend as much time fixing it as it would retyping it from scratch.
Since I figured the problems were more due to the complexity of the spreadsheet than anything else, I pulled my trusty Tomb of Annihilation out of Dungeons & Dragons and started spinning it. The results were better, albeit a bit rough, as the first block of data I photographed had no borders around its content:
The second Dungeons & Dragons table was a little more … tabular … in structure throughout the book, but the numbers didn’t quite match, as you’ll see:
However, Excel did a pretty decent job of importing the scanned text, even if it was in the wrong place. While it’s not that useful if the table is full of numbers like where they should be, it’s great if you’re importing a bunch of text. Copying and pasting (or moving) what is elsewhere is much easier than retyping it all, that’s for sure.
Finally, I gave Excel the simplest spreadsheet I could think of to import: no color, typed text with a standard font, and a normal layout:
Not bad? The digital version still needs some cleaning up and all the tabs are gone (as I expected), but the raw data is in pretty good shape. I would probably spend some of my time fixing this as I would retype it all from scratch, which makes the little Excel function worth learning if you have a fairly normal spreadsheet that you are trying to digitize. I would say there is more to it and this tool works better as a text importer than a table recreating tool.