How To Insert Image in Google Sheets Cells (Quick & Easy)

When working on a spreadsheet, you may sometimes need to insert images in your Google Sheets.

These could be a company logo, photos of people or products, or anything in picture format.

Fortunately, Google Sheets has made it quite easy to Insert image in Google Sheets Cells. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to insert an image in Google Sheets cell, in the right way.

01. Insert Image in Google Sheets Cells

Google Sheets has added a new feature called “insert image in a cell” that lets you add image to Google Sheets cells in the quickest way possible. Here is how it works:

1. Open the Google Sheets file to which you need to insert the image.

2. Select the cell where you want to insert the image.

3. Click on the “insert” option appearing in top menu bar.

4. Hover over the “image” option and select “image an image in the cell.”

5. A new dailog box will appear, first choose the option through which you want to add the image. You can upload an image from your computer, take a picture from your webcam, insert via URL, choose from Google Drive or search on Google.

6. For example; I have the Amazon logo available on my computer, I will just click on “browse” and then choose the image from my computer files.

7. That’s it.. As soon as the uploading process will completel, It will automatically get inserted into the selected cell.

Image inserted through this method is placed in the selected cell and it moves and sizes with the cell.

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02. Add Image to Google Sheets through Formula

Google Sheets also has an inbuilt formula that lets you insert pictures in Google Sheets cells through their URL.

Before we move on to how you can use the image function, first you’ll need to understand the syntax of this function:

=IMAGE(url, [mode], [height], [width])

URL: URL is the link of the image that you want to enter in the cell. Keep in mind that it should always start with ‘HTTP’ or ‘HTTPS’ as well as enclosed in double quotes (” “).

Mode (optional): Mode represents the size of your image. It is set to 1 by default, but there are three more modes:

• 1 – Resizes the image to fit inside the cell, maintaining aspect ratio.
• 2 – Stretches the image to fit inside the cell, ignoring aspect ratio.
• 3 – Leave the image to its original size, which may cause cropping.
• 4 – Select a custom size (height/width) of the image.

Height: If you’ve decided to go with mode 4, you can enter a custom height (in pixels) that simply indicates how long the picture should be to stay inside the cell.

Width: Again if you have set the mode to 4, you can enter a custom width (in pixels) that will indicate how wide the picture should be to stay inside the cell.

Now that you know the syntax of the Google Sheets image function, it is time to see it in the action:

Continuing with our previous example, now I am going to insert the Walmart logo through the following URL:

https://1000logos.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Walmart-logo.png

To insert this logo in Google Sheets, I will type =IMAGE(“https://1000logos.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Walmart-logo.png“) and as soon as I hit enter this logo will appear in the cell.

As you can see I have not used any of the optional arguments in the above function, thus the image has got fit according to the cell size.

Now, let’s try each of the mode arguments one by one to see how it will impact the appearance of the image.

When Mode is 1 – Image Resize to Fit the Cell Size

As mentioned earlier Mode 1 is the default mode of this function. This means the result you would get when the mode is specified “1” would be the same when you don’t use the Mode argument at all (like in the previous step)

For example; After entering 1 as the mode argument, our image has got resized to fit the cell. If I change the cell size, the image size will also change accordingly.

When Mode is 2 – Image Stretches to Fit the Cell Size

When you specify the mode as 2, the image will stretch its height and width to fit the cell size.

I will personally not recommend you to use this mode, as it ignores the image’s aspect ratio which may result in ugly-looking images.

When Mode is 3 – Image Displayed on its original Size

When you specify the mode as 3, the image will be displayed at its original size.

Keep in mind that if your cell height and width are not big enough to accommodate the image, the image would be cropped. On the other hand, if the cell height and width are too big, you will have empty whitespace around the image.

When Mode is 4 – Use Custom Height and Width

When you specify the mode as 4, you get complete control over the size of your image. You can specify the custom height and width (in pixels) for your image.

For example; If I want the Walmart logo to appear in 75×200 px, my formula would look something like this:

=IMAGE(“https://1000logos.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Walmart-logo.png”,4,75,200)

In most cases, the default mode 1 will be the best option otherwise mode 4 will give your full flexibility for image size.

Final Thought

In this guide, I have shared two different ways to insert images in Google Sheet.

Google Sheets’s new “insert image in cell” feature is more simple and convenient, but the formula gives you more customization flexibility.

Liked our tutorial on how to insert image in Google Sheets? Check our new guide Google Sheets 101 — aimed to make you proficient in Google Sheets.