Create Clickable SharePoint Online Image in Excel

A SharePoint Online tutorial by Peter Kalmström

In this last article about how to create hotspot images, pictures with clickable links, for use in SharePoint, we will look at how you can create such images in Excel.

Peter Kalmström, CEO and Systems Designer of kalmstrom.com Business Solutions, shows how to open a map in Excel and add links to the continents. Then he saves the picture to a SharePoint site and inserts it in a Content Editor web part in a SharePoint wiki page.

If you try this tip, make sure you don't insert the image into a specific cell. You should not have a range of cells selected when you insert the image. Images inserted in cells will only give a white box in the Content Editor web part.

Create a picture with clickable links in Excel

Open Excel and insert an image that you want to give clickable areas. You can also use a SmartArt graphic.
Use the freeform scribble shape (or another suitable shape) to draw a line around the area.
Select the area and add a hyperlink to it.
Save the image as a Web Page to the Site Pages library in the site where you want to show it.
Publish the sheet and allow Autorepublishing every time the file is saved.
Save the file as an .xlsx file to your computer and enable the AutoRepublish feature.
Open the SharePoint page in edit mode and insert the Content Editor web part.
Point the web part to the file you saved from Excel to SharePoint.

Now, each time you change something in the file on your computer and save it, the SharePoint image will be updated automatically.