Dashboards often need two tables with different column widths on one page. Excel’s Camera takes a live picture of a range: change the source and the picture updates.

Add it to the Quick Access Toolbar

File → Options → Quick Access Toolbar → “Commands Not in the Ribbon” → Camera → Add.

Use it

1. Select the range to show (for example a KPI table on a calculation sheet).
2. Click the Camera button.
3. Click on the dashboard sheet — the picture appears. Resize, add a border, or rotate it like any shape.

The picture is linked by a formula such as =Calc!$B$2:$F$9 in the formula bar — you can even change it to a named range to switch views.

Also see dynamic charts with a dropdown.

Where the Camera tool beats copy-paste

The classic use is a one-page management dashboard. Your KPI table has narrow columns, your region table needs wide ones, and you want both on the same printed page. Normally the column widths fight each other. With the Camera, each table keeps its own layout on a separate sheet, and the dashboard just shows live pictures of them.

1. Build each block on its own “calc” sheet, formatted exactly how you want it to look.
2. Take a Camera picture of each and arrange them on the Dashboard sheet.
3. Set the Dashboard’s print area and orientation once. Next month, the numbers change and the pictures update — the layout never moves.

A picture that switches views

Name three ranges (View_Month, View_YTD, View_LY). In a cell, create a dropdown with those three names. Define one more name, View_Selected, as =INDIRECT(Dashboard!$B$1). Click the Camera picture and change its formula (in the formula bar) to =View_Selected. Now the dropdown flips the picture between three tables.

Gotchas

• Pictures don’t print gridlines unless the source shows them; format borders on the source.
• If a source row is deleted, the picture’s reference can break — keep sources on a sheet nobody edits.
• Lots of camera pictures slow large workbooks, because they redraw on every change.
• In Excel for the web the Camera button isn’t available, but existing linked pictures still display.