Excel Image Function Not Appearing Anymore

Question

A company that I do IT support for uses an excel sheet to manage some information, and they use QR codes to hold some of that in the spreadsheet. We intend to move away from doing this in the future, but right now there is a problem with the =IMAGE function used to generate those.

The API being used was the Google Chart API. This library is depreciated, so I figured that if I were to change that to something current it would work. I switched it to another current API, but it still did not work. I tried seeing if it was just the QR code rendering that was the problem, but I was unable to make =IMAGE work for anything.

The error being displayed is #NAME? which the help prompt says is probably a result of a typo or me putting something into the function wrong. I tried retyping it out multiple times, but there was no option for =IMAGE in the Insert Function Wizard, and I already checked through the options to see if for some reason it was disabled, but it was not.

This is happening both on my laptop on multiple excel sheets (A sheet that I already had from a few months back and a copy of the problem spreadsheet) and on a device that is a 15 minute drive away.

It seems like this only became a problem yesterday around 1pm, but there are no documented Microsoft updates that I can find since December 12th.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated

Thank you,

Sawyer Rogers

Answer 1

Could you share us your office version? Then we may determine whether it is a bug.

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Here is mine.

Answer 2

Hello,

Woah there, looks like I am a fair bit behind. The version I'm on right now is 1808. The Update Now button above says that I am up to date though. Do you have any guidance on that?

I am also confused because obviously it has always been working for the other company, but it suddenly stopped working for them. Maybe the cause of that is something different, and this is just in the way right now.

Thank you,

Sawyer Rogers

Answer 3

Could you share us a screenshot of your version number?

IMAGE function - Microsoft Support

Answer 4

Hello,

Sure, it's right here.

Thank you,

Sawyer Rogers

Answer 5

Image function is available in M365. You are using Office 2019. You may need to upgrade your subsciption to use Image function.

You may try it in Excel Online.