novice in excel

Question

I want to attach/embed a pdf file into excel cell, office 365

I go to insert--> object--> I get a dialog box which gives only word document choice. I cannot see select from file dialog box.

Can you help!

very frustrating as I was able to do the above with excel in past.

Answer 1

Hello !

The AI answer is correct : in Excel for the Mac, you cannot embed a PDF into your worksheet. This feature is not available at the moment.

You'll need to convert your PDF as an image before anything else. There are multiple tools to do this : you can find online third-party tools, or if you have Adobe Acrobat installed on your PC, you can use this software too.

Once you've transformed your PDF in a JPG file, just insert it as an image (like you've always did in Excel).

Please let me know if you have any other question !

Answer 2

Open the PDF in Apple's Preview.app then use File> Export to create the image file [I suggest PNG rather than JPEG but either will work].

In Excel use Insert> Picture> Place in Cell - Picture from File. [Not Data from Picture]

Note that converting the PDF to an image retains only the first page of a multi-page PDF. For a multi-page PDF each page wold have to be saved individually & inserted into separate cells.

Answer 3

How do you create a image

Answer 4

On Excel for Microsoft 365 on Mac, inserting or embedding a PDF as an OLE object (Insert → Object → Create from File) is not supported the same way as on Windows. That is why only “Word document” appears and there is no “Create from File” or file-browse option for PDF in the Object dialog.

On platforms where OLE object insertion is fully supported (primarily Excel for Windows), a PDF can be added as an embedded object or icon by using:

1. Insert → Object → Create from File
2. Browse to the file
3. Optionally choose Display as icon

However, this workflow and broad object-type list are not available in the same form on Mac Excel, so a PDF cannot be embedded into a cell as an OLE object there.

Workarounds on Mac typically involve either:

• Storing the PDF separately and inserting a hyperlink in the cell that points to the PDF file, or
• Converting pages of the PDF to images and inserting those images into the worksheet.

The behavior observed (only Word document choice, no file-selection dialog for PDF) is consistent with the platform’s limited OLE support, not with a misconfiguration.

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References:

• Insert an object in your Excel spreadsheet
• Add a PDF to your Office file
• Video: Embed and link to files