While Google Sheets are great if you want to use it as a data analysis tool with charts/graphs, many times you would have a need to download these charts are images.
This could be the case if you’re creating a report or presentation and need to use the chart in it.
In this tutorial, I will show you a really simple way to save the chart as images in Google Sheets.
How to Save a Chart as Image in Google Sheets
Suppose you have a dataset as shown below and a chart created using this data:
Below are the steps to save this chart as an image:
- Select the chart
- Click on the three vertical dots that appear at the top-right part of the chart
- Go to Download
- Choose the image format in which you want to save the chart image (there is PNG, PDF, and SVG).
The above steps would instantly save the chart as an image.
While it’s great that Google Sheets has now given us an in-built functionality to save a chart as images or PDF, there are still some limitations:
- You can only do this one by one. In case you have many charts in the same worksheet or across worksheets, you won’t be able to save these charts as pictures in bulk.
- A lot of people find the resolution to be too small. The images may look grainy and low-quality.
While there are many ways you can use to save charts as images in high-resolution (some methods covered here), what I found great was to publish the chart on the web and then download that published chart as an image,
Let me show you how it’s done
Publish Chart on the Web and Then Save as an Image
Suppose we have the same chart and we want to save it as an image in high-resolution.
Below are the steps to publish a chart and save it as an image:
- Select the chart
- Click on the three vertical dots that appear at the top-right part of the chart
- Click on Publish Chart
- In the ‘Publish to the web’ dialog box, click on Publish. This will show you the link to the image
- Copy the link
- Open a browser and paste the link and hit Enter. This will open the image in the web-page
- Right-click on the image and then click on Save as
This will instantly download the chart image as a PNG file.
Once done, you can follow the same steps and unpublish the chart if you want.
When I tried both these methods to save the chart as a PNG image, the resolution used with this method (publish the chart on the web) was twice as good.
Having a better resolution of the image becomes important if you plan to use these images in presentations/reports that will be shown on bigger screens or projectors. The better the resolution, the less grainy and blurred an image would look when expanded.
Also, with this method, you can only get one chart saved as an image. If you have multiple charts, you will need to repeat this process multiple times.
Hope you found this tutorial useful!
You may also like the following Google Sheets tutorials:
